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Jevic Transportation is proving that it pays to be different. Just ask its new owner, Yellow Corp., which doled out $200 million for the family-run business in August.

Dozens of trucking executives and industry lawyers assembled to discuss vexing labor relations issues and how best to adapt to the changes ahead of them as the century draws to a close at the 13th annual conference of the North American Trucking Industrial Relations Association.

Employment attorney Thomas P. Krukowski represented the Teamsters union in the early 1970s and at one point litigated cases with newly anointed Teamsters chief James P. Hoffa. His hair is longish, he wears a bow tie and he’s still fond of quoting Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals,” a seminal organizing text of the 1960s.

Twenty-four years after launching its crusade to democritize one of the nation’s most autocratic and corrupt unions, Teamsters for a Democratic Union still faces a hostile union administration.

Truckers hope to knock away a few of the pillars supporting Idaho’s weight-distance tax with a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the levy before a state judge in Boise.

The Clinton administration believes automotive engineers, the trucking industry and the military, working together, can come up with more fuel-efficient, safer trucks. The White House is expected to seek $2 billion for a 10-year development program called the 21st Century Truck Initiative.

U.S. ports are bracing for additional loads if a lockout at the Port of Vancouver is not resolved soon, but so far U.S. port truckers are not seeing much extra traffic come their way.

Concerns about Mexican trucks operating illegally in this country were substantiated by the latest government audit, which found that federal controls are inadequate to stem the incursions.

Sixty-two percent of Colorado voters approved a state plan to go $2.3 billion in debt to accelerate highway improvements on key roads, including Interstate 25.

Timothy P. Lynch, president of the Motor Freight Carriers Association, says he would oppose on-board data recorders in trucks, hours-of-service reforms and any change in how drivers are paid.