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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Todd Spencer, CEO of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) and Chris Spear, CEO of the American Trucking Associations (ATA) had their day in Congress June 12 as part of the House Highways and Transit subcommittee hearing titled “Under Pressure: The State of Trucking in America.” Spencer painted a bleak picture of…

Nikola, a newcomer in the trucking industry, rolled out its Nikola Two, a hydrogen-fueled semi, at its Nikola World event April 16 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The American hybrid truck design company feels that hydrogen semi-trucks are the future of America’s clean trucking industry. While CEO and founder of Nikola Motor, Trevor Milton, knows there are…

The emerging online and e-commerce market is reshaping the trucking industry, according to recent research by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI). ATRI’s analysis looks at challenges and opportunities that more regionalized retail supply chains and the proliferation of urban “last mile” deliveries have presented. This research was identified as a top research priority by…

Futures markets, also known as exchanges, are common in American industry. The New York Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange, the Kansas City Board of Trade, and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange are where contracts in their respective industries are…

Uber Freight is going through some new transformations with its latest affiliate: Powerloop. Moving beyond matching carriers to shippers, Powerloop is a reimagining of the trailer pool model. Sarah Abboud, who is the senior comms officer for Uber Freight, gave an overview of the trailer pool system: “Trailer pools are groups of pre-loaded trailers that…

Though an industry-wide driver shortage gets all the ink, trucking’s biggest problem is inefficiency, according to Convoy CEO Dan Lewis. Lewis says trucks are running across the country empty 30 to 40 percent of the time, and he hopes his digital freight matching company can be part of a solution. “We think the next big…

A preliminary plan to improve Interstate 81 between Bristol and Winchester and use truck tolls to pay for it is running into strong opposition. Virginia Secretary of Transportation Shannon Valentine said the agency has not made any final decisions. Current ideas include two different truck toll prices, making it cheaper to drive overnight.“We’re just going…

The first quarter of 2018 was a good one for leased and independent owner-operators, according to data from American Truck Business Services (ATBS). The Colorado-based firm reports that owner-operators brought in higher revenue and better take-home pay during the first three months of the year. According to Overdrive magazine, the industry’s smallest carriers were able…

The pace of hiring improved slightly in April as the unemployment rate fell below 4% for the first time since the end of 2000. Trucking employment, however, saw no such gains as jobs in the industry declined for the first time in eight months, according to a report in Freightwaves. The Bureau of Labor Statistics…

Growing up in a family business with a fleet of heavy-duty trucks, Dakota Semler saw the business face a difficult choice. New state air quality standards in 2007 meant that the winery would either need to install pricey retrofit kits in each truck or replace the whole fleet. As the economy crashed the following year,…