Transport Topics

President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the federal agency on trucking affairs was easily approved by a U.S. Senate panel yesterday. The Commerce Committee voted to back the nomination of Robin Hutcheson, picked for the top job at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Her nomination advances to the Senate floor for consideration, though floor managers have yet to schedule that vote. Durin...

Truck tonnage jumped 3.7% in May compared with year-ago levels, marking the ninth consecutive year-over-year gain and the largest since April 2021, American Trucking Associations announced. The ATA For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index equaled 117.1 last month, compared with 113.3 a year ago. The May result also represented a 1.4% gain over 116.5 in April. ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said the freight...

For-hire motor carriers achieved significant revenue gains and higher profits last year, powered by surging freight demand. This growth among large fleets is reflected in our Top 100 For-Hire Carrier rankings for 2022, now available in print and online. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fleet technology supplier Samsara is rolling out product updates designed to streamline drivers’ daily routines, mitigate unsafe driving and improve fleet management. The updates include enhancements to Samsara’s Driver Workflows, which guide drivers through various compliance- and safety-related tasks to help simplify those processes. Samsara also announced In-Cab Nudges, a new feature that gives...

President Joe Biden has sent a letter to U.S. oil refiners to tell them that unprecedented profit margins are unacceptable, while calling for immediate action to improve capacity as the soaring price of gasoline feeds record inflation and fears of a recession. Biden said his administration was prepared to take steps that would help companies increase output in the near term, and said he’s ordering...

Retail sales for trucks in classes 4 through 7 sank 16.3% in May compared with a year earlier to just below 17,000, Wards Intelligence reported. It was the largest year-over-year percentage decline to date in 2022. Sales were 16,859 compared with 20,134 a year earlier, according to Wards. One truck maker said the priority in production has been and will continue to be heavy-duty trucks versus medi...

The nationwide average price for a gallon of gasoline has hit $5 for the first time ever. Auto club AAA said the average price June 11 was a fraction of a penny over 5 dollars. Motorists in some parts of the country, especially California, are paying far above that. The national average price has jumped 19 cents in just the past week, and it is up $1.93 from this time last year. Learn more about y...

U.S. Class 8 retail sales in May rose 13.9% compared with a year earlier to just clear 20,000, Wards Intelligence reported June 10. A trend is building. Sales in the two previous months also percolated higher compared with almost every month in the past 12 months. May sales were 20,713 compared with 18,187 in the 2021 period. All truck makers but two increased sales in May compared with a year ear...

House Transportation leaders called on the nation’s top transportation officer to increase resources for the expansion of parking facilities for truck drivers. Reps. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, and Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, wrote to Secretary Pete Buttigieg, saying that increased funding for truck parking availability would help alleviate long-standing supply chain inefficiencies....

Robin Hutcheson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to oversee FMCSA, discussed administration efforts to bolster the trucking industry during her confirmation hearing June 8. She appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee, assuring the panel her team is focused on the implementation of trucking workforce provisions included in the infrastructure law, such as an apprenticeship to allow commercial dr...

Uber Freight and Waymo Via have entered into a partnership that aims to integrate Uber’s freight marketplace with Waymo’s automated truck technology, the companies announced June 7. The businesses plan to blend their products and collaborate on development of tools and infrastructure to advance deployment of autonomous trucks for Uber Freight’s shipper and carrier customers. Waymo also intends to...

The average price of diesel shot up last week by 16.4 cents to $5.703 a gallon, according to Energy Information Administration data released June 6. The previous record, notched about a month ago, was $5.623. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

North American Class 8 orders fell to 14,000 units, ACT Research reported June 3, citing truck makers’ preliminary data, as underlying conditions that held back order intake sharply in April were little changed. Orders a year earlier hit 23,072, according to ACT. The last time Class 8 orders were in the 14,000-unit range was February 2020. FTR pegged May orders at 13,300. Class 8 orders have total...

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg earlier this week kicked off a construction project in Nevada that will upgrade an aging Interstate 15 interchange to improve travel for truckers and all drivers accessing the Las Vegas Strip. Buttigieg noted that the interchange project will replace a bridge, improve access ramps, double sidewalk widths for pedestrians and add advanced traffic safety featur...

President Joe Biden’s recent interstate designation of a New Mexico-to-Texas freight corridor will give truckers a less congested route for future U.S. trade with Mexico and Canada. Departments of transportation in New Mexico and Texas have begun evaluating their portions of a new freight corridor since Biden on March 15 designated an entire roadway system, called Ports-to-Plains Corridor, as a fu...

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has extended regulatory waivers related to truckers’ allowable work time, citing continuing public health concerns over COVID-19. The waiver associated with commercial drivers’ maximum driving time for property-carrying vehicles was extended through Aug. 31. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association filed a federal lawsuit on May 27 alleging that California environmental regulators have failed to give manufacturers enough lead time to meet the state’s new, more rigid emissions standards. In its lawsuit, EMA alleges that the federal Clean Air Act requires that manufacturers be given “four full model years” of lead time before new emission standard...

The average price of a used Class 8 truck reached $101,192 in April. But April dipped compared with March and its record price of $101,716, marking only the second month-over-month decline since July 2020. Used Class 8 sales in April essentially were level at 22,100 compared with 21,700 in the 2021 period, according to ACT Research, and lower compared with 25,200 in March. Learn more about your ad...

A federal court is finally hearing oral arguments in a 4-year-old legal challenge to the state of Rhode Island’s trucks-only tolling program. The trial in the lawsuit — filed by American Trucking Associations and two motor carriers over the Rhode Island Department of Transportation’s tolling plan — began Monday and is expected to last up to three weeks. ATA specifically alleges RhodeWorks tolling...

Truck tonnage in April increased on an annual basis but declined compared with March, American Trucking Associations reported. The seasonally adjusted ATA For-Hire Truck Tonnage figure of 115.8 dipped 2% from its 118.2 result from March, the first sequential decline after eight consecutive gains. But the index rose 1.8% compared with April of 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

Cargo continues to flow into Los Angeles despite some of the COVID lockdowns in China, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka says. “The situation in China may lead to a lull in volume with a fairly quick bounceback once the lockdowns end,” said Seroka. Los Angeles reported its second-busiest April in its 115-year-plus history, moving 887,357 20-foot-equivalent containers, even as it s...

The spot market has been declining, but with rates and volumes still above historic norms it’s unclear where it will stabilize. Ben Cubitt, senior vice president of consulting at Transplace, says rates per mile have declined since Q4 from $3.50 to about $2.36. Truckstop.com regularly recorded more than a million daily postings on its load board platform throughout last year. That has steadily decr...

American Trucking Associations in a 29-page written comment on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposal to reduce nitrogen oxides said it generally supports the goal. However, the federation stressed that its fleet members’ message is to minimize purchase, maintenance, warranty and operational costs and maximize performance, durability and driver satisfaction. Of the two options in the pr...

Classes 4-7 retail truck sales dropped 15.4% in April compared with a year earlier, according to industry analyst Wards Intelligence. Total sales were 16,439 compared with 19,431 in the 2021 period. The combined Classes 4- 5 segment drove the decline, falling 38.1% to 7,117 compared with 11,502 a year earlier. It also marked the segment’s lowest volume of the year. Learn more about your ad choices...

Nearly 43,000 people were killed on U.S. roads last year, the most in 16 years as Americans returned to the highways after the pandemic forced many to stay at home. The 10.5% jump over 2020 numbers was the largest percentage increase since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began its fatality data collection system in 1975. Forty-four states had increases in traffic deaths in 2021...