Safety

When American Trucking Associations and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association — two groups frequently at the opposite ends of trucking industry issues — are able to agree on something, you know it’s a pretty momentous occasion.   And recently the two trucking groups agreed to take on an issue that’s close to our heart: truck driver safety.

If an appeals court agrees with a lower court judge who backed the Port of Los Angeles’ argument that it is a business, then all drayage truck drivers will be required to be employees of licensed motor carriers.

Finance and information technology trucking executives are set to meet this week in Phoenix, as American Trucking Associations embarks on a campaign to reinvigorate some of its councils that had to retrench during the recession.

Technology that can detect from the roadside whether a vehicle is current on its registration and insurance has been launched successfully on a small island nation and could be expanded to save North American cargo fleets some time on the road and in the back office.

Trucker and shipper organizations unanimously told federal regulators last week that four new driver-fatigue studies introduced into the public record last month are flawed and do not support changes called for in a proposed federal hours-of-service rule.

Motivated by concerns over driver safety, American Trucking Associations and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association united in asking the federal government to research the idea of national standards to improve a driver’s chances of surviving an accident in a Class 7 or 8 truck cab.

Third-party logistics firms PenserSC and ICS Logistics said they have agreed to a trucking and transportation services contract.

Large and small carriers increasingly find themselves on opposite sides of a widening gulf when the topic is electronic logging devices — particularly when the issue is whether or not ELDs should be required by government mandate.

American Trucking Associations and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association have together written to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asking the agency to begin researching how standards for crashworthiness for heavy trucks could benefit professional truck drivers.