Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) has introduced a bill that would require the Department of Transportation to study and establish a maximum number of hours that drivers may be detained at loading docks without being compensated.

A shipper group has expressed “profound disappointment” over a so-called fact-finding investigation by the Federal Maritime Commission into numerous U.S. importer and exporter complaints about “perceived malpractices” by ocean carriers that resulted in supply-chain service disruptions and rate and surcharge increases in late 2009 and 2010.

The president of the National Tank Truck Carriers has asked the National Transportation Safety Board to withdraw and reopen its investigation into a fatal 1997 tank truck accident that he said has become the “poster child” of the agency’s longtime campaign to require purge retrofits for cargo tank wetlines.

California environmental regulators have pledged to cut truckers some slack early next year while enforcing the state’s amended transport refrigeration unit rule that will require all refrigerated trucks and trailers be equipped with low emission TRU retrofits or engines on their 2003 trucks and trailers by Dec. 31.

Although private sector employment increased by 159,000 overall during the month of October, for-hire trucking employment only grew by 300, according to the Labor Department.

A slate of proposed amendments to California’s tough heavy truck diesel emissions reduction regulation would save the trucking industry more than $3 billion in retrofits and engine replacements and delay some compliance requirements by a year or more, according to a report by the state’s environmental regulatory staff.

Dean Newell, vice president of safety and training for Maverick Transportation, was recently honored as National Safety Director of the Year by American Trucking Associations’ Safety Management Council.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a ban on owner-operators at the Port of Los Angeles, granting an injunction sought by American Trucking Associations.

PHOENIX — Mack Trucks Inc. and Michelin North America will continue their support of the “Share the Road” highway safety education program in 2011, company officials announced.

The Port of Los Angeles is recommending that harbor commissioners push back the first phase of the port’s controversial clean trucks program until the end of 2011.