Business

Canada-based transportation firm Trimac Income Fund said it lost C$700,000 in the first quarter, or 5 cents per unit, compared with a profit of C$600,000, or 2 cents, a year ago.

I have just finished reading the article “Trucking Faces Core Changes, Hebe Says.” I am not usually a man of few words, but the only thought that comes to mind at the moment is “hogwash!”

Ever so slowly, less-bad economic news — and even some good news — is beginning to pop up among the seemingly never-ending crop of troubling news that you have been seeing in this newspaper every week for about a year.

SAN DIEGO — A “perfect storm” of a nose-diving economy, high fuel prices and governmental missteps have all combined to ravage the trucking industry and the companies that supply its equipment, according to Jim Hebe, senior vice president of North American sales for Navistar Inc.

Details of the Environmental Protection Agency’s record $10.5 billion fiscal 2010 budget proposal — a 37% increase — quickly set off a partisan debate in Congress last week over the agency’s plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The average price of retail gasoline soared last week, jumping 16.2 cents a gallon to a U.S. average of $2.24, leapfrogging diesel, which rose 3.1 cents to $2.216. Gasoline prices exceeded diesel for the first time in nearly two years.

Registrations of new trailers plummeted 62.5% in the first quarter as the economy weakened, and industry executives and analysts said trailer manufacturing was headed for its worst year since 1975.

Intermodal freight volume declined 16% in the first quarter of 2009 from a year earlier, in part because of stiffer truck competition for trailer shipments, the Intermodal Association of North America reported.

The debate over future surface transportation policy is likely to be directed by Congress, rather than the Obama administration, several industry lobbyists said following the recent release of nu-merous documents.