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Comment by watchandwait | Hacker News Reader

The truck driver and his company is also exploiting the highway "commons" and passing most of the costs on you, the auto driver. Almost all damage and wear on U.S. roads comes from heavy trucks, and the gas taxes paid by truckers come nowhere near covering the cost they inflict on the highway system. So next time you are stuck in traffic in a construction zone, you can thank the big rigs.

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Have you ever looked into what it takes just to hook a trailer with a bobcat on it to your pickup and pull it as part of your business? Next time you get close to a big truck, take a look at all of the regulatory stickers plastered all over it. Every single one of those costs many thousands of dollars per year. I assure you the trucks pay their fair share and then some.

Compared to trucks, you basically use the roads for free on their dime.

@ Noonespecial Exactly the point I was making also.

This isn't true. Auto drivers pay more than their fair share for the roads-- the gas tax actually also subsidizes some passenger rail and other forms of transportation.

Again, just because heavy trucks pay extra taxes doesn't mean that they cover their impact on the road system.

"Passenger vehicles account for 93 percent of all vehicle miles traveled on public roads in the United States. While large trucks account for just 7 percent of the miles traveled, they account for the most damage to the infrastructure."

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/costallocation.htm

It also says:

"In the 1997 HCAS combination trucks were found, on average, to pay 90 percent of their Federal highway cost responsibility through user fees, but with changes in the fuel tax they now pay only 80 percent of their cost responsibility. The heaviest combinations, those over 80,000 pounds, pay only half of their cost responsibility."

So most trucks you see on the road pay 80-90% of their way already from a purely federal fuel-tax dollar standpoint. The gas tax is just the beginning for trucks. Now consider state licensing fees, permits, mandatory inspections, tolls that increase exponentially per axle, and what must be the ridiculous cost of compliance. Between the DMV and the DOT the papers that need filing fill a 3-ring every year, and there's a fee every other page. (I suppose the question of whether or not that money makes it back into road maintenance is bound to come up but that seems like a whole different issue.)

Seriously, put a sheep in the back of a pickup in Fresno and try to drive him to Seattle without doing anything illegal.

Those little stickers on the sides of trucks with states on them are not there for decoration...they are tax stamps. They must be purchased on a per state basis depending on which states you intend on operating in...that combined with fuel tax and other taxes imposed on the drivers mean they probably pay far more than you do per mile to use the highway systems.

Loads are limited by weight per axle as to minimize the damage on the roads...not to mention that on a per pound of useful goods basis they are far more efficient than driving your 4000lb car to just haul your 100-300lb ass.

Where I live the majority of road damage is due to studded tires or weather...next time you are on a rutted highway notice how its not rutted for the dual tires that trucks have but it fits a normal car perfectly.

And that truck is delivering the goods that you buy, so it seems to me that it washes out in the end.

If trucks paid their way, more goods would travel by freight rail.

Hugely, massively ignorant. For one, much of the funding for roads comes from taxing gas, which truckers pay proportionately for.

Beyond that, have you ever bothered to notice those little areas on the side of highways called weigh stations? You know, the ones where you don't have to stop? Yeah.

If anything, the subsidy runs from truckers to casual drivers, not the other way around.

If you are going to engage in name-calling, at least cite a source. There are multiple studies that show that heavy trucks destroy roads and bridges (one truck causes 9,600 times more wear than a car) and also that heavy trucks are disproportionately dangerous, killing about 5,000 people a year.

The point is that heavy trucks don't pay enough taxes to cover their actual impact on the road-system.

Good luck getting your goods without them. What would happen if we split all the heavy trucks into several smaller trucks? That would make the problem worse. Besides the primary importance of the highway system is to transport goods and necessary resources to areas not accessible (or not economically practical) by rail/sea.

Actually, splitting the heavy trucks into smaller trucks would be better, paradoxically. Wear and tear on the road increases exponentially with vehicle weight. Weigh stations account for this by increasing the cost per pound for larger weight classes of truck.

The reason it doesn't happen is because then you've got to pay additional drivers, which outweighs the cost savings from avoiding the additional road use taxes.

For one, much of the funding for roads comes from taxing gas

I feel the need to add the qualifier that this is true of federal roads, but less so as we talk about local roads. I realize the story pertains to the interstate system, but as a cyclist the widespread misconception that gas tax funds all roads and other users are somehow freeloaders is quite detrimental.

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