IdleAire announced it would install its truck stop electrification technology at all 126 TravelCenters of America locations over the next three years, with a price tag of more than $1 million per site.

SALT LAKE CITY — Before 3,000 cheering spectators here, FedEx Freight’s Wayne Crowder became the first person in the 67-year history of the National Truck Driving Championships to win honors as both the Rookie of the Year and the Grand Champion, for 2004.

Officials in Louisiana, California and New York recently said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had not responded to their requests to use gasoline blends without the oxygenate known as ethanol, which is an EPA requirement in those states.

Major players in the trucking industry are trying to forge a consensus over what financial incentives they will ask Congress to provide to encourage the use of cleaner-burning diesel engines as the effective date of new federal pollution rules draws nearer, officials said.

Thousands of drivers who applied for the Free and Secure Trade program at the U.S.-Canadian border have not followed up with required in-person interviews, said Chris Kealey, a spokesman for the Canada Border Services Agency. The FAST program pre-approves drivers so they could cross the border quickly.

American Trucking Associations has joined 11 other trade associations requesting a meeting with Environmental Protection Agency officials to try to head off possible tightening of air quality standards for fine particulate matter in the agency’s planned review of a 1997 regulation.

The New Jersey Supreme Court on July 19 struck down the state’s $212 hazardous materials transporter fee, in a decision stemming from a suit American Trucking Associations had brought against the state.

A little more than five weeks after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the government to allow Mexican trucks to deliver in the United States, industry and government officials told Transport Topics some significant barriers remained to opening the border anytime soon.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it was working with industry representatives to determine the locations of proposed “clean corridors” where fleets could buy ultra-low-sulfur fuel in 2005 to test 2007 diesel engines in actual operating conditions.

Railroads struggling to cope with higher-than-usual freight volumes and a labor shortage at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., have caused congestion there that could last throughout the fall, industry representatives said.