Ever see the stickers on the back of semi-trailers saying "this vehicle
pays $5,000 (or some such) in road taxes per year"? I guess they're
trying to make the rest of the road-using public feel better. Of
course, they cause much more damage to roadways than that (not to
mention that a lot of said "road tax" may just be fuel taxes, which we
all pay on each gallon o' petrol). Touring the highway lab run by UC
Berkeley's Civil Engineering department, I was told that passenger cars
and light trucks aren't even considered in the equation of wear and tear
on highways because it is so slight compared to heavy truck use. As I
recall, heavy trucks in Michigan have lotsa axles to spread the load
more; in fact, I think Michigan may be the only state that has such low
axle load allowances. That should help on highway wear.
Yet we'd probably be paying more for various goods if we didn't have an
effective truck transport system. So maybe the subsidy is warranted.
Dunno for sure. Certainly rail is more fuel efficient over long hauls
than trucks, but the trucks are damn versatile.
Re the driving patterns of heavy truck drivers, my experience says the
great majority are reasonable and doing a good job. There are the
occasional cowboys, of course....(and of course we've never seen a
doofus driving a passenger car, right?)
Benn
> The real fuel and highway killers are the tractor trailer trucks that
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