For the first time, members of the Intermodal Association of North America met last week in joint session with the National Industrial Transportation League and the Transportation Intermediaries Association.

Intermodal service is an important business for the nation’s railroads, but it continues to fall short of the industry’s oft-stated goal of diverting truck traffic to trains.

The retail price of diesel fuel dropped by 1.9 cents to $1.61 per gallon last week, marking the third straight week of a downturn that now totals six cents and has fueled a kind of wary optimism about prices in the long term.

The ripples from the impact of plummeting sales of new trucks spread wider last week as ArvinMeritor Inc., a major manufacturer of axles for heavy vehicles, announced plans to cut another 1,500 jobs, or about 4% of its workforce, from its payroll.

Intermodal service is an important business for the nation’s railroads, but it continues to fall short of the industry’s oft-stated goal of diverting truck traffic to trains.

Financing, once plentiful, is becoming more difficult to obtain for buyers and sellers of used trucks as a glut drives market values down.

The national average price of diesel fuel dropped for the second straight week, this time by 1.9 cents, and an oil market analyst says November may see additional drops — perhaps by as much as 5 cents a gallon.

Freightliner Corp. is recalling thousands of vocational and severe-service type trucks with air brakes made since 1991 to repair a faulty brake pin that the National Transportation Safety Board said contributed to a fatal accident.

The glut of used trucks that is driving down prices of new and used vehicles alike is not likely to dissipate before 2004, according to used truck dealers and companies that finance used truck purchases

Consorcio G. Grupo Dina, a leading Mexican manufacturer of heavy trucks, filed a $110 million lawsuit against Western Star Trucks over the cancellation of a major supply contract.