FALLS CHURCH, Va. — Speakers at a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration “listening session” here said federal safety policy should focus more on drivers and less on equipment, and they suggested ways to improve the agency’s fleet review and rating processes.

Natso Inc., the Alexandria, Va.-based trade association representing travel plazas and truck stops, said Oct. 12 it had named Lisa Mullings as its new president.

PHILADELPHIA — Constraints on freight-hauling capacity, combined with rising fuel and labor costs and the trend by manufacturers to outsource work to China and other less-expensive areas, are making it increasingly difficult to control distribution costs, said officials and industry analysts at the Council of Logistics Management conference here last week.

Acquisitions and expanding worldwide trade have raised the level of competition among European and North American logistics service providers, an annual ranking of logistics companies by Transport Topics has shown.

Con-Way Transportation Services said it would encourage all its 13,000 drivers to participate in American Trucking Associations’ Highway Watch program, in what ATA said was the first corporate-wide effort by a national trucking company.

Fleet managers said they are buying significantly more trailers than a year ago, but not for the reason analysts offered last fall when making predictions.

Schneider National and Wal-Mart Stores topped the lists of for-hire and private carriers, respectively, that most expanded their trailer fleets over the past year, based on a review of data in the 2004 Transport Topics 100 lists of large U.S. and Canadian carriers.

About one-fifth of America’s largest private carriers bucked a long-term trend of contraction last year by in-creasing fleet size by at least 50 heavy-duty tractors, according to research for the 2004 edition of the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian private carriers.

A tentative business recovery that gathered steam in 2003 and now appears to be pushing the limits of freight-hauling capacity boosted revenue and profits for most, but not all, of the carriers on the 2004 edition of the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.

While demand for freight hauling has been strong and trucking company profits have been on the rise, the outlook for trucking stocks is cloudy, said some industry analysts.