Safety

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is doing a good job of targeting carriers that pose the highest risk of accidents, but fails to follow a 1999 law requiring that maximum fines be given to the most serious safety violators, a new government report said.

American Trucking Associations’ August for-hire truck tonnage index rose 0.9% from a year ago but dipped 0.8% from July, ATA said Tuesday.

A New Jersey Department of Transportation plan released Tuesday recommends improvements in the state’s roadways and other freight passages to maximize the economic benefits of more efficient freight movement.

Truck idling limits in Rhode Island, New Jersey and California are the newest restrictions in a growing list of regional regulations, according to a recent report published by the American Transportation Research Institute.

Volvo AB said its heavy truck deliveries for the first eight months of the year fell 4.4% worldwide, while North American deliveries plunged, Bloomberg reported Monday.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration filed a memorandum with a court in Washington Friday strongly supporting American Trucking Associations’ request that the court’s vacating of provisions of truck driver hours-of-service rules be stayed pending reconsideration by the agency.

The current truck-driver hours-of-service rules — allowing 11 hours of driving and restarting a week after 34 hours of rest — are likely to remain in place for at least several more weeks.

Driver turnover at large truckload carriers fell 11 percentage points to an annualized rate of 116% in the second quarter, compared with the previous three months, American Trucking Associations reported.

Five counties in southwestern Indiana will switch from Central to Eastern time beginning Nov. 4, the U.S. Department of Transportation said.