Editorial

At the very least, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration needs to provide the freight transportation industry sufficient time to respond to its proposal to fix the clearly broken Unified Carrier Registration agreement.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has proposed “fixing” the underperforming revenue aspects of its Unified Carrier Registration agreement by shifting more of the financial burden to the nation’s law-abiding trucking fleets.

When trucks and truck drivers are mentioned in the general media, they seem almost invariably to be put in a bad light.

We’re still waiting for definitive signs that the economy has turned the corner on this recession, and a return to normal business levels is just down the road.

The new economic Siamese twins, namely the stock market and oil prices, are continuing to rise in lockstep, bringing relief and pain to consumers — and the national economy — simultaneously.

Keeping both hands on the wheel and texting a message on a handheld device cannot occur at the same moment in time.

There were no surprises in the new federal rule designed to improve the braking power of a standard, fully loaded, tractor-trailer by almost one-third.

Our latest little honeymoon with fuel prices likely will end soon, as recent increases in the cost of crude oil work their way down to the retail pump.

Now that we’ve had a week to digest the Transport Topics 100 ranking of the largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada, it’s clear that our coverage focused as much on the coming silver lining as on the bleak economic reality of 2008 and the first half of 2009.

At a time when good news in the trucking industry is hard to come by, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration served up a generous helping of it last week when it said that truck-related highway fatalities plummeted 12% last year.