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Trucking’s ills and rising shipper expectation that rail services will be more reliable could give railroads a bigger slice of the freight market, according to an official with one of the nations’ top freight brokers.

Driver pay — a hot topic at the Transport Topics Management Outlook Forum a year ago — is taking a back seat to more pressing issues as carriers struggle with high fuel costs and a softening of freight activity.

Long-haul drivers who work for less in return for being reimbursed for their meals are better off financially than drivers who get full compensation and itemize their meal expenses for tax purposes, said David Goodson, editor of the National Survey of Driver Wages.

The results of Canada’s national elections are in and while trucking industry officials are hopeful that transportation policies will be given a prominent place on the government’s agenda, a pre-election report card distributed by the Canadian Trucking Alliance suggests that will not necessarily be the case.

Idle-Aire Technologies hired Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, to market a system designed to provide air conditioning and heating to truck cabs at truck stops so that engines won’t have to be idled.

A Philadelphia jury concluded that a rear underride guard on a Strick Corp. trailer was not defective and denied the plaintiff’s request for $8 million in a product liability lawsuit filed against the trailer maker.

Issues of highway safety, individual freedom and the government’s avowed intention to mandate the use of some forms of safety-related technology on future heavy-duty trucks dominated the discussion during an Dec. 4 forum at the Society of Automotive Engineer’s annual Truck and Bus Conference here.

There was no magic on display at the Society of Automotive Engineers annual Truck and Bus Conference here last week.

Because of forecasted increases in online shopping this holiday season, it is likely that retailers will have just as much difficulty getting goodies to children on time as they did last year.

What may have appeared as a Conestoga wagon to the undiscerning eye was actually the trailer bearing the Capitol Christmas tree. The 64-foot Colorado Blue Spruce arrived in Washington, D.C., Dec. 4 after a 10-day trek from Colorado’s Pike National Forest, near Colorado Springs.