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New housing starts fell to a record low last month, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

A Senate panel Wednesday approved Ray LaHood to be Secretary of Transportation, passing his nomination by President Obama to the full Senate, the New York Times reported.

The average price of U.S. retail diesel fuel rose last week for the first time in more than three months, inching up 2.3 cents a gallon to $2.314, the Department of Energy reported.

The information systems that support intermodal trucking companies are much like the business of intermodalism itself: complex, multi-headed and increasingly important to motor carriers.

A top U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official said last week that the agency has “absolutely no intention” of granting the request by truck and engine manufacturer Navistar Inc. for a two-year delay in implementing 2010 federal diesel emission standards for new heavy trucks.

U.S. consumer confidence improved this month, according to the Reuters/University of Michigan’s preliminary monthly consumer sentiment index released Tuesday.

Consumer prices fell 0.7% in December led by declining energy costs and slowing the declines of previous months, the Labor Department said Friday.

Manufacturing levels in the Philadelphia region contracted in January, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said Thursday. It was the 13th month of contraction in the last 14 months.

Transport Topics Online will be closed Monday, Jan. 19, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Tuesday, Jan. 20, due to the presidential inauguration. Please check back on Wednesday, Jan. 21, for the latest trucking and freight transportation news.