Safety

Federal regulators have the statutory authority to issue permits for U.S. longhaul operations to Mexico-domiciled trucking companies despite poor participation by Mexican carriers in a three-year pilot used to demonstrate their safety, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Under legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in April, California motorists will start paying higher gas and diesel taxes in November to provide funding for, among other state transportation projects, reducing the backlog of road and bridge repairs.

A decision by federal trucking regulators to adopt sweeping recommendations of an elite academic panel’s study assessing the way truckers are safety-rated has been mostly well received by the industry; yet some truckers admit they are a bit baffled by the complex “item response theory,” or IRT, approach to revamp the federal Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.

Ryder System launched a preventive maintenance program for its pre-owned vehicles, the Miami-based company said. Under the program, customers can finance or prepay for their selected preventive maintenance plan when they purchase a pre-owned vehicle, the company said.

Years of pleas from parents whose son was killed by a speeding tractor-trailer, buy-in from some truckers and the promise of fewer highway deaths convinced U.S. officials in September to propose requiring speed-limiting devices on all large rigs.

The trauma from a mass shooting at a United Parcel Service distribution center has made going back to work almost unimaginable for many of the nearly 40 workers who witnessed the June 14 massacre.

Just before Stefan Seltz-Axmacher offers a job to an engineer at Starsky Robotics Inc., a driverless trucking startup in San Francisco, he gives them “the talk.”