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Captive rail shippers pleaded with the Surface Transportation Board last week to “restore and enhance” competition in the Houston and Gulf Coast areas by granting other railroads access to Union Pacific lines and allowing some customers to build links to other carriers.

Congress is expected to try again next year to update the nation’s postal laws, but any changes will likely be far from the privatization efforts that have taken hold in Europe.

American Trucking Associations last week announced the merging of its Logistics and Information Technology councils.

The state-owned German post office, Deutsche Post AG, has launched a $1.1 billion bid to acquire Danzas, the Swiss-based international transport and logistics company. The Danzas board of directors met Dec. 10 and recommended that shareholders accept the offer, which will begin officially in mid-January.

Xtra Corp. ended merger discussions with Apollo Management and Interpool Inc. and said it intends to remain an independent public company.

Diesel, gasoline and oil prices are at very low levels, and there appears to be little concern within trucking that this will change drastically in the near term. At the recent Oil & Money Conference conducted by the Energy Intelligence Group, executives and analysts within the oil industry seemed to concur with this assessment. Most speakers at the conference believe the price of oil will probably bounce around its current levels, at least for the next few months, and perhaps even longer.

The Department of Transportation’s inspector general has launched a sweeping review of the federal motor carrier safety program in response to congressional requests.

Transponders, the little black boxes in trucks that are essential to electronic vehicle identification and highway-speed clearance at ports of entry, depend on short-range radio communication. There is more than one system on the market, but a single communication standard that would make all transponders “interoperable” has eluded private industry — and the government is under pressure to step in and dictate a solution.

Federal Express and the Hewlett-Packard Medical Products Group are building a bridge with software.

Weight limits on some rural bridges can be increased 25% or more without compromising safety or inflicting damage, allowing heavy vehicles to use the spans and cut their operating costs, according to a civil engineer from the University of Missouri at Columbia.