Safety

Roadrunner Transportation Services Holdings Inc. said it bought less-than-truckload carrier Bullet Freight Systems Inc. on Dec. 14 to expand its services in the western United States.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has begun enforcing its New Entrant Safety Assurance Process rule, requiring stricter safety standards for newly registered truck and bus companies.

WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the department was working to complete its work on a regulation to ban texting by commercial drivers, and that it would be finished “sooner rather than later.”

Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) will introduce a long-awaited rail bill on Dec. 15 that expands the Surface Transportation Board and adds several provisions that could give shippers more choices of rail carriers, committee officials said.

Today’s new diesel-power trucks are, by law, equipped with particulate filters, and in many models the DPF will soon will be joined by another aftertreatment device — selective catalytic reduction, or SCR, in a canister.

In a local newspaper, I recently read an editorial titled: “Truckers Should Not Be Texting While Driving.” The writer improperly quoted statistics and singled out the trucking industry as the problem.

Former American Trucking Associations chairman Patrick Quinn, an executive of U.S. Xpress Enterprises, has returned to a leadership role with the federation, succeeding Robert Davidson as the organization’s treasurer on Dec. 7 for a 10-month term.

Donaldson Co., a manufacturer of filtration systems, said Monday it is spending $5 million to enable one of its plants to manufacture parts that comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2010 diesel emission standards.