The federal agency responsible for overseeing the transportation of hazardous materials has a new safety chief.

The huge digital finger on Yellow Corp.’s annual report to shareholders makes a perfect point about the state of trucking in 1999: It was the year of the Internet.

A former driver for Overnite Transportation Co. said he was paid $10,000 to damage company property and falsely accuse union sympathizers so they would be fired.

It should have been a banner year for trucking companies in 1999. The U.S. economy was robust and demand for freight-hauling was strong. Although bedeviled by a shortage of drivers and rising fuel costs during the second half of the year, many trucking executives and industry analysts thought they saw an end to overcapacity and a real opportunity to raise rates and boost razor thin profit margins.

Higher rates and a more profitable mix of freight boosted earnings of Overnite Transportation Co. in the second quarter.

It should have been a banner year for trucking companies in 1999: The U.S. economy was robust and demand for freight-hauling was strong. But fuel prices and a persistent driver shortage ate into profits.

The huge digital finger on Yellow Corp.’s annual report to shareholders makes a perfect point about the state of trucking in 1999: It was the year of the Internet.

Overnite Transportation Co. said employees at its Toledo, Ohio, service center filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board on July 18 to decertify the Teamsters union as their bargaining agent.

With backing from an Atlanta venture capital firm, Thomas M. Caudell is turning the lowly business of lumping into a big, high-tech center of profits.

Three years ago, Richard E. Durst, president of Arctic Express in Hilliard, Ohio, sat down and calculated the cost of exchanging pallets with shippers.