West Coast ports remained choked with traffic that still had not improved much since the dockworkers' work stoppage three months ago, truckers reported last week. But others said they thought the problems could be improving.

Alabama agreed last week to stop ticketing truckers that it said had improperly registered their rigs in Oklahoma and it said it would cancel the tickets it had issued.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is seeking comment on whether it should allow Oregon to continue exempting farm trucks from safety regulations, so the state would not have to lose millions of dollars in federal truck safety grant money.

The Environmental Protection Agency is quietly lobbying against using one of the most promising methods for meeting the government’s tough 2007 diesel engine regulations, although the method offers simplicity, economical operation and probably will be adopted in Europe, according to industry sources.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory said it was building a truck pollution research lab along Interstate 40 in Tennessee to study real world diesel emissions.

Oklahoma has sued the international group that administers truck registrations to stop that group from withholding millions of dollars in truckers' fees that would go to the state.

Mexico's transportation secretary said if the United States does not remove what he called discriminatory conditions for allowing Mexican trucks into the country, Mexico should ban U.S. trucks in retaliation.

The U.S. Postal Service said it would cancel $25 million of regional airmail contracts in 2003 and put the mail on trucks, but regional airlines have formed a group to lobby Congress to thwart those plans.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced it was considering whether to convene an industry panel to craft regulations to resolve a longstanding issue of intermodal chassis and trailer safety.

State and federal officials said a Tennessee weigh station would soon begin operating a first-of-its-kind truck radiation detector that can detect low levels of radiation and spot materials that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction.