In case you don’t regularly check our News Roundup section on Logistics Viewpoints, here are some important developments that occurred this week:

Hours of Service (HOS) trucking rules are back on the drawing board. After years of legal challenges, the “final” rule was published last November. But earlier this year, Public Citizen, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Truck Safety Coalition, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court to overturn the HOS regulations. This past Monday, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) entered into a settlement with these groups, whereby FMCSA has nine months to review its current rule and submit a notice of proposed rulemaking on this issue to the White House, and up to 21 months to issue a final rule to replace the current one (the current rule will remains in place in the interim).

In a press release, Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said, “We will continue to push for a rule that protects trucks drivers, instead of the greed of the trucking industry. Longer hours behind the wheel are dangerous for our members and the driving public.” The American Trucking Associations (ATA) issued a statement too: “Safety in the trucking industry has greatly improved while operating under the current hours-of-service rules,” said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. “Over the past five years we’ve seen a strong decline in truck-involved crashes on our nation’s highways.” According to the statement, the number of truck-involved fatalities on U.S. highways has decreased by 19 percent since the new HOS rules took effect, and the number of injuries has decreased by 13 percent since 2004. I guess safety is in the eye of the beholder.

Stay tuned on what happens with HOS in the weeks to come. While the impact may be minimal today due to the slow economy, significant changes to HOS could have negative consequences to shippers and carriers when capacity tightens up again.

U.S. surface trade with Canada and Mexico fell 24.9 percent in August compared to August 2008. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics press release, this decrease translates into an $18 billion drop in trade value. From January through August of this year, surface trade between the United States and its NAFTA partners has decreased by $171.2 billion in value. I’m not sure how much of an impact our dispute with Mexico over NAFTA’s trucking provision has had on these results, but the $2.4 billion in punitive tariffs Mexico placed on some of our goods certainly hasn’t helped.

Transpslace (an ARC client) and CombineNet announced a partnership related to transportation procurement. Further proof that transportation procurement is a hot topic these days. As I wrote about earlier this week, transportation procurement is facilitated by technology, but also requires people who understand the market and have the right set of negotiating skills. In a nutshell, this partnership effectively brings together both of these capabilities.

Descartes (an ARC client) released a new version of its ISF “10+2″ solution. There was a lot of buzz about ‘10+2’ this time last year, when U.S. Customs & Border Security (CBP) came out with the Importer Security Filing rule. The rule went into effect this past January, but the penalty phase won’t begin until January 26, 2010. I expect other vendors to make similar announcements in the weeks to come. If you procrastinated on ISF compliance this year, the clock is ticking.

Have a great weekend!