Business

The head of the Louisiana state trucking association said that shippers and freight transporters should expect major delays after a part of Interstate 10 was closed in the wake of a natural gas fire.

John Ficker, president of the National Industrial Transportation League, will step down at the end of November, NITL said Monday.

Aluminum manufacturer Alcoa, Pittsburgh, Pa., said Monday that its Alcoa Auto and Truck Structures business in Hungary delivered a aluminum truck bodies to SIP-WELL, a company that delivers water coolers and water to homes and offices.

The value of U.S. Freight Shipments to Canada and Mexico in 2006 rose to a record $866 billion from $790 billion in 2005, the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics said Monday.

Private Equity firm Fenway Partners, New York, N.Y., said Monday it acquired Canadian transportation firm Consolidated Fastfrate.

U.S. diesel fuel prices rose another 12.2 cents last week to $3.425 a gallon, the second consecutive record high and the eighth increase in the past nine weeks, the Department of Energy said.

Heavy-duty retail truck sales in the United States fell 53.1% in October, the sixth straight month in which sales fell 50% or more below 2006 levels, according to WardsAuto.com.

ATLANTA — UPS Inc.’s incoming chief financial officer told shippers here what freight carriers have long heard: The U.S. transportation network is so clogged — and getting worse — that Congress must create an infrastructure improvement plan and pay for it with dedicated taxes on the system’s users.

STUTTGART, Germany – The world’s largest commercial vehicle maker last week said it is moving ahead with a host of projects to develop less-polluting trucks and buses, but warned that governments and oil companies must cooperate if these products are to become commercially viable.