Editorial

Washington, D.C., is often the butt of jokes for its year-after-year inaction. But this week — one filled with transportation events — there is a sense that maybe, just maybe, 2014 will be different.

With another year coming to a close, we look back with some relief that freight demand showed steady growth despite endless obstacles coming from Washington, D.C.

An awful lot has changed over the years in the trucking industry. And, like in so many industries today, the pace of that change seems to be escalating every year.

It looks like the recent run of lower fuel prices is at an end. As we report on p. 1, the average price of a gallon of diesel fuel rose 2.2 cents last week to $3.844 after 11 weeks of declining or steady prices.

New data clearly support what many of us have been saying for months: The new changes to the federal hours-of-service rule for truck drivers are reducing productivity, undermining service levels and raising costs.

There was a time when it was a simple matter to understand the differences between a trucking fleet and a logistics provider.

In these days of diminished expectations in our federal government, we should surely be happy to find that a bipartisan House panel has managed to find unanimity on at least one topic of interest to us: that the nation’s freight system is vital to the future well-being of the country.