Autonomous

While Wall Street continues to express its doubts about the strength of the U.S. economic recovery that is under way, most trucking companies say that business is continuing to improve.

The proposal for revamping the federal government’s hours-of-service rule for truck drivers that a coalition of interest groups released recently illustrates just how little these political theorists understand about highway safety and the business of moving America’s freight.

The U.S. Department of Transportation in June awarded grants totaling $6.25 million to five states to “ease truck parking shortages on U.S. interstates.”

This week’s issue of Transport Topics includes some interesting news about the federal government’s new safety regime for trucking, Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, including that the program is going to be renamed.

Tim Lynch, American Trucking Associations’ top lobbyist, said last week he would leave the federation in July to join a Washington, D.C., law firm’s government affairs department.

After improving along with most other equities during the last nine months of 2009, trucking stocks this year have done little more than tread water, with a good run from early February through late April sandwiched between two brief pull-backs by investors.

Detroit Diesel Corp. said it will spend $194 million to renovate its 72-year-old Redford, Mich., plant, the latest example of truck makers pouring investments into diesel engine facilities to manufacture the complicated new power plants and vertically integrate production.

The federal government’s Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 is supported by the trucking industry but needs some changes, a trucking executive testifying for American Trucking Associations told a congressional panel Wednesday.

About the two May 17 “rate setting” letters: It’s important for trucking companies to understand that we are the ones who set the rates.

Amid the gyrations of the stock markets and the television talk-show discussions about a possible double-dip recession, virtually all business signs in the trucking industry show unmistakable movement toward recovery and expansion.