Your May 13 Pre-Trip: Morningstar lowers credit rating of Navistar

Here are five things worth knowing today:

1. Credit weighting firm Morningstar has become the latest research company to lower the credit rating of Navistar, says WKRB. Morningstar has dropped Navistar to a “B-”, which indicates the company is a high default risk. Morgan Stanley also recently re-rated Navistar, moving it from a rating of “equal weight” to “underweight” and lowering its stock price target from $26 per share to $20.
2. While Congress seems paralyzed over how to pay for infrastructure improvements in the next highway bill, a new analysis by the American Road & Transportation Builders Assn. says nearly all politicians who voted to raise gas taxes were re-elected, says The Hill, suggesting that there is support for doing so.
3. Initial reports from the Texas Dept. of Public Safety are suggesting that a truck driver’s lack of attention may have been a factor in a partial bridge collapse along I-35, says the Killeen Daily Herald. According to reports, the truck struck the bridge, causing a beam to fall and kill a pickup driver.
4. Georgia authorities have arrested a truck driver whose rig leaked canola oil along several miles of I-75, says WMAZ 13. Three accidents were blamed on the leak and the driver was charged with having an unsecured load.
5. An accident that killed three nursing students involving a Total Transportation tractor-trailer, which is owned by U.S. Xpress Enterprises, has resulted in a three wrongful death lawsuits against the carrier, says WJCL News. The suit claims that the driver, John Wayne Johnson, made no attempt to stop his vehicle before slamming into the back of seven stopped vehicles in the right lane.