Business

TAMPA — “If you’d have told me 20 years ago I’d be general chairman, I’d have told you you was crazy,” said Roy Gambrell, incoming general chairman of the Technology & Maintenance Council, who began his career repairing equipment on the family farm.

The U.S. and Mexico agreed last week on a deal that would allow Mexican trucks to deliver to destinations in the United States and lead Mexico to drop $2.4 billion a year in retaliatory tariffs it has imposed on U.S. products.

Truck driver training schools face a potentially crippling loss of revenue following a vote in Congress that could eliminate federal funding of job training grants.

The federal standard for underride guards on trucks and trailers is inadequate and should be upgraded to protect the drivers of vehicles that crash into the rear of trucks, an insurance safety advocacy group said last week.

U.S. retail fuel prices shot up last week as petroleum closed above $100 a barrel for the first time since September 2008 and as unrest in Libya and the Middle East left people in trucking wondering how high prices might go and how long they might stay there.

A.P. Moller–Maersk A/S, the Danish company that owns the largest ocean shipping line, announced record earnings on Feb. 23, powered by a rebounding international freight market.

Logistics Management Solutions, St. Louis, acquired intermodal marketing company McCann’s Piggyback Consolidation in Fenton, Mo., and formed a new business unit called Freight Management Solutions to provide intermodal and freight brokerage services.

Factory orders jumped 3.1% in January, the biggest gain in almost four and a half years, the Commerce Department said Friday.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell below 9% in February for the first time in almost two years as employers added 192,000 jobs, the Labor Department said Friday.

President Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon agreed Thursday to a program that will allow Mexican trucks to travel into the United States, the Associated Press reported.