answers for inquiring minds

Transportation may have been deregulated decades ago, but legal and regulatory issues still crop up in just about every shipping and distribution operation. Disagreements with carriers and brokers, questions about contracts and freight charges, and problems with freight claims are all everyday occurrences. But where to turn for information?

The Transportation and Logistics Council Inc. (TLC), a nonprofit organization that educates and represents shippers in matters of transportation regulations and law, has long published clearly written, "plain English" handbooks on transportation law, freight claims, and cargo insurance. Now the group is offering some of the books in its "Transportation and Logistics—Q&A in Plain English" series on searchable CDs.

Currently, TLC has made available Q&A books I, II, III, and VII (the most recent volume) on CD. The disks include an Adobe PDF version of the full text. Users can click on a topic in the table of contents to jump right to the subject of interest, or use the Adobe "search" function to find a particular term or string of words.

TLC's Q&A series includes hundreds of real-life questions asked by shippers, carriers, and logistics service providers through the organization's online forum, the TLC HotLine, and its monthly publication, TransDigest. The clear, concise answers are written by leading transportation attorneys George Carl Pezold and Raymond A. Selvaggio. For more information or to order the books, go to www.tlcouncil.org and click on "Publications."

And while we're on the subject of transportation law, TLC's 35th Annual Conference will be held March 23-25 in St. Louis. Workshop topics include recent cases in transportation law, cargo theft prevention, how to purchase transportation insurance, bills of lading and tariffs, and much more. For details, visit the council's Web site.