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Ryder System said Tuesday it sees more demand for heavy-duty natural gas vehicles and that it has secured lease agreements for 87 heavy-duty natural gas trucks.

Bill Malone must have been one of the few people in trucking who could chuckle at the price of diesel one day this spring. It was well over $4 a gallon, but Malone was untroubled because the 18 tractors in the fleet he oversees are fueled with liquefied natural gas.

The first extended network of natural gas filling stations could be running in a few years, the head of the nation’s largest natural-gas fuel distributor said April 13.

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. has agreed to establish compressed natural gas facilities at the Atlanta-area fuel stations of PS Energy Group.

Trucking executives, fuel vendors and manufacturers of aftermarket engine technology said it is easier to get an alternative-fuel vehicle onto a motor carrier’s lot than it is to get a viable alternative fuel into a truck’s tank.

Senate Democrats introduced legislation last week that would provide truckers rebates of $64,000 for every natural-gas Class 8 truck put into service by 2013.

Applied LNG Technologies said it is supplying liquefied natural gas to Speedy Fuel’s first LNG fueling station to serve the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.