President Bush's selection of railroad executive John W. Snow to be Treasury Secretary will help give transportation issues high-level visibility in the administration's economic policy, trucking and transportation observers said last week.

Cost-conscious shippers are taking advantage of improved rail service to split their long-haul loads between trucks and trains, and they are increasingly using intermodal containers rather than truck trailers to do it.

Some larger trucking companies are trying to capitalize on the appetite for intermodal shipping by offering customers the flexibility to shift easily between a purely truck movement and a truck-rail mixture.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters ended a bitter, three-year strike against less-than-truckload carrier Overnite Transportation of Richmond, Va. on Oct. 24.

WASHINGTON — The less-than-truckload industry and the Teamsters kicked off negotiations Oct. 8 over a new labor pact, with the union searching for more health and pension benefits and higher wages and management saying it needed greater flexibility to delve into new types of businesses.

Trucking company failures in the second quarter fell to their lowest level since the end of 1999, as the economy was in recovery from last year's recession, a new study shows.

Executives from three of the nation’s largest truckload carriers told a gathering of Wall Street investors here that even though the Oct. 1 engines with mandatory anti-pollution devices were an irritation for their operations, they thought their companies were poised for strong growth in revenue and profits.

NEW YORK — Two major less-than-truckload carriers told investors here Friday they were eager to haul freight that once moved by Consolidated Freightways, but only if they were well paid for it.

Two years of collapsing trailer sales have driven weak manufacturers from the market and left the remaining companies with far more dominant market shares than a decade before.

Freightliner LLC, North America’s largest truck maker, has filed a civil suit against truckload carrier Swift Transportation Co. and its leasing subsidiary asking for almost $10 million in damages, alleging the trucking company overbilled the manufacturer on warranty work.