Business

A continued shortage of available low-mileage used Class 8 trucks is being blamed for lower sales and higher prices in July, industry executives and dealers said.

Truck fleets ordered 13,200 new commercial trailers during July, a 20% increase over July 2010, but the fourth straight month of declining figures, ACT Research Co. reported.

WASHINGTON — President Obama called on Congress to extend the nation’s current transportation funding law before it expires Sept. 30 and then launch a “serious conversation” about how to make lasting investments in infrastructure.

Truckers in the Northeast, particularly Vermont, were dealing last week with washed-out roads and collapsed bridges in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. Flooding in New Jersey took out an interstate highway bridge on a key truck route.

In the 10 years since terrorists crashed airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the nation has rebuilt and moved on, but with a greater emphasis on security of all kinds, including for ground-based freight transportation.

U.S retail diesel prices rose last week for the first time in five weeks, as the Department of Energy reported that the national average cost rose 1 cent to $3.82 a gallon.

With gasoline at its second-highest level for a Labor Day weekend, travel is forecast to be down about 2.5% this year, according to the automobile group AAA, the Associated Press reported.

Heartland Express said Friday that CEO Russell Gerdin has retired due to health reasons and has been succeeded by Michael Gerdin, the company’s president.

The National Transportation Safety Board is urging regulators to require rollover-prevention technology on fuel-tanker trucks, following its probe of a 2009 crash in Indianapolis, Bloomberg reported Friday.