Several years ago, we ran a cover story about globalization and trucking. The response was largely a collective yawn.

Looks like we were ahead of our time.

Today, the transportation and logistics world is becoming increasingly global.

We can see it in the transitioning of many trucking companies into global logistics providers. Werner Enterprises has offices in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, China and Australia. Duane Long, the new chairman of the American Trucking Associations, is head of Raleigh, N.C.-based Longistics, which bills itself as “a full-service provider of global logistics solutions.”

We can see it in the travel HDT editors have done in the past couple of years, as manufacturers and suppliers host news and information events and we go to trade shows as far-flung as Mexico, Germany and China. This summer I visited Shell’s new global research facility in Shanghai, which will play into development of the newest engine oils for North America.

We can see it in the increasing number of trucking products and technologies being brought to the U.S. from abroad, either directly or adapted to the North American market.

Just look at the transmission market. Volvo adapted its automated transmissions from Europe for its I-Shift and the Mack mDrive. Maybe Volvo’s new dual-clutch transmission introduced in Europe this year will be next. Daimler North-Americanized a European automated transmission to create the Detroit DT12. We may well see ZF’s TraXon next-generation automated transmission arrive here from Germany as the appetite for automated transmissions continues to grow in the U.S.

For another example, consider the huge international splash Daimler Trucks made earlier this year, both in trucking and in the general media, with its Future Truck 2025 project showcasing autonomous driving technologies. That truck is a European Mercedes model you’ll never see on these shores. But as Daimler announced at ATA last month, some of the technologies used on that truck will be available here in the U.S. in the near future in the form of a proprietary suite of integrated safety systems, Detroit Assurance. (Look for more on these technologies from Equipment Editor Jim Park on Truckinginfo.com this month as he attends a hands-on demo of the new system.)

Increasingly, global equipment manufacturers are engineering products on global platforms that can easily be adapted for various markets. Dana just unveiled a new family of single-reduction drive axles developed for the global market with regional customization capabilities. Last year, Cummins announced a new global heavy-duty engine platform that’s initially being made in China but is expected to eventually find a place in North America as well.

With all this in mind, we want to start giving you a broader global perspective about what’s going on in trucking around the world. We’ve already been doing more reporting of these topics on our website, Truckinginfo.com, and we will continue to increase that coverage.