Business

Heavy-duty vehicle parts manufacturer Eaton Corp.’s first-quarter net earnings rose 5.6%, led by international sales, though its truck segment’s sales declined, the company said Monday.

Business inventories rose 0.6% in February, the Commerce Department said Monday.

Retail sales rose 0.2% in March, the Commerce Department said Monday.

Volvo Truck Corp. said Monday it launching two hybrid refuse trucks in Sweden that will be tested in regular daily operations by two refuse firms there.

Shippers may have more interest in radio frequency identification tags than do general freight truckers. After all, RFID tags are a wireless form of bar-code stickers and data capture, and RFID is widely marketed as a tool for inventory and warehousing.

Parts supplier American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings has asked a federal mediator to help broker a deal to end the a 48-day strike, but offer was rejected by the United Auto Workers union, the Detroit News reported Monday.

Nearly 90% of the biodiesel available for sale in the United States meets the established standards for quality, an improvement over past surveys but still an unacceptable situation for trucking, a new report by the Department of Energy said.

Stung by the sharp rise in diesel prices, fleet executives are pushing to find new ways to stretch their fuel dollars and recover as much of their costs as possible.

Plans by the Chinese government to close factories in and around Beijing and Shanghai this summer to reduce air pollution for the 2008 Summer Olympics could cause early or late peak seasonal surges in exports to the United States, shipping industry executives and transportation experts said.

Unfavorable economic trends and fuel prices will collaborate to propel trucking companies’ first-quarter earnings below year-ago levels and will lead to a shrinkage of the fleet in the truckload sector, industry analysts said.