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Congress
just keeps on truckin’
By Jim
Surber
February 4, 2012
It has been
said that if you think the problems that government creates are bad,
just wait
until you see its solutions. At a time when our nation’s infrastructure
has
been neglected for years and the prospects for additional funding for
roads and
bridges are about as likely as balancing the federal budget,
legislators are
crafting plans that will further destroy our highways. The U.S. House
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is now considering
legalizing much
heavier trucks (up to 97,000 pounds for single-trailer trucks and over
100,000
pounds for double and triple-trailer trucks) on American roads.
The
nationwide limit on truck weight has been 80,000 pounds (40 tons) since
1982 with
27 states allowing heavier 6-axle trucks up to 100,000 pounds on
interstate
highways.
The Ohio
members of the Transportation Committee are Representatives Jean
Schmidt and
Bob Gibbs. Ms. Schmidt has said that increasing weight limits will make
it easier
for the transportation industry to deliver goods more efficiently by
allowing
states to increase truck weight limits, saving money and fuel. She
further
stated that “...modernizing 30 year-old truck weight limits is an
important way
to strengthen our economy,” and did not say that there would be any
downside.
Should we all applaud the picking of such low-hanging fruit?
While many
legitimate safety arguments can be made against this proposal, I
decided to
look in terms of relative wear and tear to highways versus vehicle
contributions by way of licensing fees and fuel taxes.
After
designing and maintaining roads and bridges for the better part of four
decades, some things have become very apparent to me.
Engineers
and other involved technical and political people in 1982 were not
stupid, nor
did they “sandbag” weight limits by setting them at 20-25 percent under
what
could be responsibly and effectively carried.
Most local
roads and many State roads are the products of evolution, not design.
Over many
decades, they progressed from earth to gravel to asphalt with no design
or
adequate construction from base to surface.
For the
past 30 years, new bridges have been designed with recognition of the
80,000
pound restriction. Increasing weight limits will require each and every
bridge’s capacity to be re-calculated with many structures requiring
posting
for restricted load limits.
Trying to
juggle allowable truck weights with their proportional road tax
contribution
has always proved to be a difficult political exercise. More than one
engineering study has determined that a legally-loaded 18-wheeler
(80,000
pounds maximum) crossing a length of road causes an amount of wear and
tear
equal to that of 9,600 passenger cars (assumed to weigh 4,000 pounds
each).
Although the weight differential is 20 times, the damage is 480 times
20. How
much more will it be if the 80,000 pounds becomes 97,000 pounds or more?
I
calculated the relative cost to owners of cars and heavy trucks in
terms of
license fees and fuel tax paid per mile of travel by assuming 15,000
miles for
a car and 125,000 miles for a heavy truck annually. The unaudited
results were
2 cents per mile for cars and 13 cents per mile for heavy trucks, which
indicates that trucks pay about 6.5 times that of cars. While some may
argue
with my resultant costs, I believe the differential should be very
close.
Considering
the relative damage (9,600 to 1) and relative tax contribution (6.5 to
1), do
heavy trucks pay a fair share of road and bridge costs? Obviously not,
but if
they were forced into paying more, it would simply be passed along to
the
consumer. The only certainty is that the situation and proportion do
not need
to be made even worse.
Oddly
enough, the 150,000-member Owner-Operator Independent Drivers
Association, an
organization of small-business truckers, condemns the increased-weight
legislation by calling it the product of “big business interests.”
Their
statement is probably spot-on.
Not to be
dissuaded, a spokesman for Rep. Schmidt’s office said a federal study
found
that raising truck weights could cut road repair expenses because fewer
trucks
would be on the road. Perhaps he would also think that this would be
ample
justification to permit 100-ton behemoths to ply our roads and highways.
The most
important fact is: the last increase in the federal highway gas tax
happened in
1993. Many people are neither willing nor able to pay more, and the
cost to
repair and maintain our roads and bridges under current conditions
exceeds
federal funding.
This
current attempt to legislate heavier trucks with its supporting
Congressional
logic and rationalizations brought to mind this real-life illustration
of how
Washington manages our nation’s finances:
Consider
the following rounded dollar figures:
U.S.
Annual Tax
Revenue:
$2,170,000,000,000
Federal Budget:
$3,820,000,000,000
New Debt:
$1,650,000,000,000
National
Debt:
$14,271,000,000,000
Recent Budget
Cut:
$38,500,000,000
Now, remove
8 zeros (divide each by 10 million) and pretend that it’s a household
budget:
Annual
Family
Income:
$21,700
Money the
family spent:
$38,200
New debt on
their credit card:
$16,500
Outstanding
balance
on credit card:
$142,710
Their
budget cut (which some politicians would be proud of):
$385
It can easily be seen that
the recent
federal budget cuts by Congress were nothing to brag about, but many
members
did. Maybe we should all prepare ourselves for bigger trucks and bigger
budget
cuts. Keep on truckin’, Congress!
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