Business

WASHINGTON — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration now aims to publish its revisions to the hours-of-service rule and a proposed expansion of its electronic data recorder requirement by the end of the year, the agency’s head said last week.

Booming dry-van sales led to a surge in U.S. trailer registrations in the third quarter, as buyers registered 35% more new trailers than in the corresponding period of last year, R.L. Polk & Co. reported.

WASHINGTON — Trucking industry executives, citing projected U.S. population growth and growing freight demand, said that increasing the productivity of trucks by making them larger or heavier was necessary.

Swift Holdings Corp., the new corporate name for carrier Swift Transportation, said it plans to raise as much as $1.01 billion this month in an initial public offering of shares that could be the largest ever for a truckload fleet.

In a slow retreat from the two-year high it reached in November, the U.S. retail diesel price average slipped again last week, falling 0.9 cent to $3.162 a gallon, the U.S. Department of Energy reported after its weekly survey of filling stations.

TNT NV, the Netherlands-based package and mail delivery operator, said it would spin off Europe’s second-biggest express delivery service and keep the smaller mail division, Bloomberg reported.

Greenbriar Equity Group raised its offer to buy out parcel courier Dynamex to $24 a share from $21.50 a share after an unidentified investor topped Greenbriar’s original offer and nearly derailed the private equity fund’s takeover effort.

Federal regulators have officially opened the public comment phase of their first-ever regulations to set commercial truck fuel-efficiency and carbon-emission standards.

The U.S. economy’s service sector expanded at a faster pace in November, the Institute for Supply Management said Friday.