Business Briefs

Big money artists

The 40th Annual Autumn Art Festival presented by CenturyLink and Subaru awarded more than $16,000 to Florida artists participating in the two-day festival. Among the talented artists honored, David Figueroa in the Sculpture category was selected as Best in Show. The Winter Park Autumn Art Festival is the only juried fine art festival with the tradition of featuring Florida artists exclusively. From over 350 applications, 156 of outstanding artists were selected to display their work in eight different categories, including ceramics, drawings and graphics, fiber, fine crafts, jewelry, painting, photography and sculpture.

Natural gas boom

The Wall Street Journal and the Florida Trucking Association report that sales of natural-gas powered big rigs could jump as much as fivefold this year as falling prices for both natural gas and the carbon fuel tanks required for such trucks come down. Lowe’s, Procter & Gamble, UPS and PepsiCo are among the major U.S. companies that have gone on record saying they’re expanding their fleet of trucks that can run on either compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas. Shipper UPS is set to buy 1,000 natural-gas trucks by year’s end, and P&G, whose fleet is about 7 percent natural gas, is looking to boost that figure to 20 percent by 2015.