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More than 2,600 shippers, carrier executives, transportation specialists and others were set to converge in San Diego this week at the 91st annual meeting of the largest shippers’ organization in the U.S., the National Industrial Transportation League.

Federal Express Corp. said it plans to restructure its operations to make the company less dependent on its unionized pilots, who have refused to work overtime after labor talks stalemated and the company walked out of the negotiations.

An editorial in Traffic World magazine suggesting that American Trucking Associations “has not yet hit its stride” drew a spirited response from Stoney “Mit” Stubbs Jr., chairman of Dallas-based Frozen Food Express Industries.

American Trucking Associations recruited a senior executive of the Association of American Railroads to be its new senior vice president and chief financial officer. AAR Executive Vice President David B. Barefoot will begin his new job in early December.

Driver fatigue was spotlighted as the No. 1 safety issue in trucking as a result of the 1995 Truck and Bus Safety Summit that was held in Kansas City. To be held in Atlanta Dec. 6-10, the next national meeting will continue the dialogue among “the best highway safety minds” in the U.S. and North America, said the federal Office of Motor Carriers.

AmeriTruck Distribution Corp. is getting out of the refrigerated trucking business, but expects to continue its other operations, as it reorganizes under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code.

Aasche Transportation Services, Shannon, Ill., expanded its waste hauling business with two recent transactions.

The Arkansas Highway Commission has proposed to place tolls on Interstate highways in Arkansas to pay for repairs and improvements, but a newly assembled coalition opposed to new tolls on Interstates will do everything in its power to make sure that doesn't happen.

For all its tongue-twisting jargon and impressive college curricula, billions of bytes of software and lickety-split communications, when all is said and done the transportation industry is, very simply, moving boxes of stuff from here to there.