If you have any doubts that there can be too much of a good thing, ask a trucker. Before the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, fewer than 20,000 private trucking fleets and individual owner-operators served the United States. Today, that number has swollen five-fold to 600,000-90 percent of whom have twenty trucks or fewer on the road.

Such an intensely competitive landscape has led truckers to turn to high-tech in ways that their pre-1980 predecessors could never have imagined.

Since the turn of the millennium, more than half the industry has adopted computer programs to monitor billing trends and commodity prices, establish custom performance indicators for real-time transactions, and alert headquarters of any bottlenecks. "Trucking companies can be more profitable," says Tom Weisz, chief of TMW Systems, a trucking software leader. "Look at the trucks on the road: 10 to 20 percent of them are empty."

Yet even full trucks face record fuel costs: a total of $16.5 billion more this year than the last (some firms offer $5,000 bonuses to drivers whose average fuel consumption exceeds the industry average of six miles per gallon). In the face of this pressure, manufacturers have turned to the sort of air flow tests once reserved for airplanes and rocket ships.

Cost savings are driving engineering advances. A recent exhaust brake redesign ensures constant backpressure as engine speeds change; over the life of a vehicle, the reduced costs of relines can exceed $7000. A new tamper-proof remote control brake system promises to let law enforcement officers halt any runaway big rigs-a leading terrorist threat scenario.

Meanwhile, more durable materials and designs allow an increasing number of diesel engines to run half a million miles between oil changes and a million miles between larger overhauls-advancements the Infoshop consultancy calls "astonishing." Top diesel engine maker Cummins this year tripled its first quarter profits on record sales of new truck engines.

On the safety front, in an industry short some 200,000 drivers, increased vehicle efficiency has been matched by a renewed attention to the comforts of truckers themselves. Kenworth Motor Truck Company, its long-standing claim as "the world's best" codified by the 2004 J.D. Power award for Customer Satisfaction, is setting new standards in sleeper cabs; its T2000 model, in addition to exceptional aerodynamics, offers a sleeper superior to many urban studio apartments, complete with two full-length closets, tufted sewn lining, and twenty-plus interior lights.

A competitor for Kenworth's T200's crown is Volvo's new VT880, which boasts a 625-horsepower engine (the most powerful on the road) as well as airflow efficient enough to meet emission standards into the next decade. The result is a tractor that can consistently climb a 3 percent grade at 65 mph while loaded to 80,000 pounds (a third of

the U.S. terrain truckers cover is either hills or mountains). Peter Karlsten, president of Volvo Trucks North America, predicts a popular product for customers seeing "a strong image and serious performance."

Sales of such Class 8 trucks like the T2000, VT880 and company (at prices upwards of $100,000) currently average a quarter million a year. As befits all the new players in the game, this number is more than 25 percent over the level in the previous boom years of the late 1990s.

So, it sounds like truckers have spoken. 'Too much of a good thing' may slice margins razor-thin, but the added demand makes for more sophisticated management and higher quality machines.