Unable to settle on a compromise, trade associations representing freight brokers and motor carriers are offering their respective industries competing models for business contracts governing relations be-tween their transport sectors.

Longhaul less-than-truckload carrier Yellow Transportation is reorganizing its managerial structure to keep up with customers’ changing demands, the company’s president said in an interview.

Truck makers sold 24,297 heavy-duty trucks in April, a 19.2% increase over April 2005, marking the 30th-straight month of year-over-year expansion.

Parcel couriers are consuming technology voraciously to provide their drivers with sophisticated hand-held delivery devices, route their trucks more efficiently and create appealing Web sites where their customers and their customers’ customers will choose to do business instead of making telephone calls to carrier personnel.

UPS and FedEx so dominate the American public’s mind when it comes to parcel shipping, it took an international invasion from Deutsche Post’s DHL division to significantly alter the market. However, there are smaller parcel couriers serving niche markets and they, too, are investing in technology.

Publicly traded less-than-truckload carriers told of a softening LTL rate environment in their first-quarter reports, saying they had succeeded in getting fuel surcharges to stick, but were not able to boost freight rates significantly beyond that.

Original equipment manufacturers sold more heavy-duty trucks last month than ever before, moving 25,895 Class 8 trucks to U.S. buyers. The 26.2% sales jump over the strong March 2005 market level puts truck makers on a pace this year to break the record level of Class 8 U.S. sales set in 1999.

SAN DIEGO — Truck fleets will soon have to invest in extra training for maintenance personnel because of the complexities involved with the 2007 diesel engines, the ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel that powers them and the new low-ash motor oil they require, a chemical company engineer said.

SAN DIEGO — New ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel, which is due out later this year, should be ready on time, but it may be a tough, irritating and expensive process, engineers from the federal government and two oil companies told a trucking industry conference here.

Changes in distribution patterns by shippers are combining with well-known industry issues of high fuel prices, a shortage of drivers, modifications to hours-of-service rules and highway congestion to drive down the average number of miles that a truck hauls a shipment, according to several carriers and shippers.