Business

European truck makers Scania AB and MAN SE are considering a joint effort to make commercial vehicles and potentially become Europe’s largest truck maker, Bloomberg reported Monday.

Heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Monday it will buy a mining equipment company in a deal valued at more than $8 billion.

Business inventories rose 0.9% in September, the Commerce Department said Monday.

Manufacturing activity in the New York region contracted this month, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Monday.

Unfamiliar words such as “stability” and “price increases” are creeping into the less-than-truckload sector’s vocabulary these days, after a turbulent two years of rate cutting, market-share swings and some astronomical losses.

I read with interest the letter from Colin Young about keeping less-than-truckload drivers — especially the part about management thinking it should take you only so long to go from point A to point B, without taking into consideration traffic flow during different parts of the day or other unforeseen circumstances.

It just shouldn’t be this difficult. Here we are with virtually everyone involved agreeing that there is a major problem with the country’s aging infrastructure that needs to be addressed, and quickly.

Demand for logistics services is on the rise after falling sharply in 2009, as shippers look for ways to meet shifting market demand and deal with looming constraints in freight-hauling capacity.

The co-chairmen of a bipartisan presidential commission created to find ways to reduce the federal deficit last week called for gradually raising the federal fuel tax by 15 cents a gallon, beginning in 2013.