Safety

Video coverage of the 2014 National Truck Driving Championships from the floor of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh.

The Department of Transportation announced this week it will award states grants to help them respond to crude oil railroad spills.

U.S. rail intermodal traffic increased 3.2% in the week ended Aug. 9 compared with the same week last year, the Association of American Railroads reported.

Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems said its Huntington, Indiana, brake shoe plant has undergone a $3.2 million expansion.

About 16,180 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the first six months of 2014, a 4% decline from the same period last year, the National Safety Council said.

A proposed reverse logistics rule would offer an exception from existing regulations for certain reverse logistics shipments by highway that will create “opportunities for reduced compliance costs among hazmat shippers and carriers, without any decrease in safety,” federal hazmat regulators said.

Roadrunner Transportation Systems Inc. said it agreed to acquire the logistics company Active Aero Group from Aero's parent company, Platinum Equity for $115 million.

Insufficient motor carrier route planning, a failure by a pilot/escort to warn of potential hazards and inadequate evaluation of oversize load permit requests by state officials were the probable causes of an oversize truck strike that brought down the Interstate 5 Skagit River Bridge in Washington state, according to a final investigation report of the National Transportation Safety Board.

A federal judge in New York on Aug. 6 dismissed a class-action lawsuit filed last year by American Trucking Associations alleging that the New York State Thruway Authority is improperly spending more than a billion dollars in toll revenue on maintenance and improvements on the state’s mostly recreational canal system.

Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, sending the average over the past month to an eight-year low, a sign the labor market continues to gain momentum.