Editorial

The nation’s safety inspectors for trucks and buses have announced a sensible policy for enforcement of the mandate for electronic logging devices — a phased-in approach. That should help lessen disruption in the already-challenging task of moving freight, and that is entirely a good thing.

Without rules for everyone to follow, the world would become a chaotic place. But uncertainty about which rules one must follow can itself create chaos.

Watching people with the liberty to pursue happiness actually do so can be highly worthwhile, even inspirational. As our team in Orlando, Fla., shows on this website and in the Aug. 21 edition of Transport Topics, that was abundantly the case at the recent National Truck Driving Championships and its companion event for truck and bus safety inspectors.

Watching markets function would not make for a good spectator sport on TV, but the process does have its charms and we recommend it highly — especially when freight transportation is involved.

The desire for safety is obvious and broadly shared — it’s intuitive.

Any artist will tell you that perspective matters when looking at a picture. A survey of the financial picture for industries that affect trucking, which was presented at an economic conference last week, is no different.

Mathematics started tens of thousands of years ago because Stone Age people needed to count what they had, or wanted, or even what they had lost. At the start, there was no need to formally quantify the concept of nothing, or zero. At some point, though, a clever person came up with the idea of zero and it revolutionized the use of numbers.

After many weeks of compiling data collected directly from fleets and from a number of other sources, we’re pleased to present the 2017 edition of our Top 100 For-Hire Carriers list.

E-commerce really has some buzz going for it now, including significant activity by UPS, FedEx and Amazon.

Rivers transport dirt that is deposited as silt and, eventually, after millions of years and many tons of pressure, it becomes rock. It’s a very slow process, but geologists think it’s beautiful and worthy of study.