Government

Consumer confidence fell this month to a five-year low, the New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — The new head of the Federal Highway Administration said he was open to considering changes to truck size-and-weight limits and other truck productivity issues as part of the Transportation Department’s proposals for the 2009 reauthorization of federal transportation legislation.

The government of Ontario has resurrected a plan to make speed limiters mandating maximum mandatory truck speeds at about 65 miles per hour in the province, according to the Ontario trucking Association, which backs the plan.

The trucking industry is part of a grand environmental experiment being conducted in British Columbia — the first North American jurisdiction to introduce a carbon tax on all fossil fuels, including diesel, at the retail level.

American Trucking Associations and the Partnership for Uniform Marketing Practices recently requested that California prohibit the use of automatic temperature compensation equipment in retail fuel sales.

Retail diesel and gasoline prices again set U.S. records last week as the diesel average flirted with $4 a gallon, according to the Department of Energy.

Michelin & Cie., the world’s second-biggest tire maker, said it will link the prices of car tires to the cost of oil, Bloomberg reported Friday.

Manufacturing levels in the Philadelphia region showed contraction for a fourth consecutive month in March, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said.

Widespread flooding primarily in the Midwest threatened to worsen Friday, with many rivers rising past their banks for more than a day, the Associated Press reported.