I think that they do. I just got done going on a trip in Ohio to Kentucky and was held up with numerous road projects.
And I found this interesting article:
Overweight trucks damage infrastructure. (USA Today)
Over weight and over dimensional was my bread and butter for a long while. The interstate system is NOT designed for 40tons. Its designed for transporting tanks which routinely weigh out in combat load over 70tons. That doesn't include the transport. The USA article you provided is quite misleading and to be blunt poor journalism. They didn't do their homework. Permits for overweight are based on the capacity of the road to handle a given weight in a given amount of space. Now those 70ton tanks are hauled by transports that distribute the weight over a wide and long area. the trailer has 7 axels with eight tires an axel. Each tire is capable of supporting 1.5 tons, so the total amount able to be hauled by that unit is 84 tons.
Most states go by federal limits though there are a few that exceed the limits. Typical permitted weights allowed are 20,000 lbs an axel providing a minimum tire width is met to distribute the weight and the space between groups of axels are met. So a single axle would be permitted at 20,000 tandems at 40,000 and tridems at 60,000.
Heavier combinations than 80,000lbs is generally by trip permit and various states have widely differing rates for the permits. California ironically enough is on the inexpensive end of the spectrum while Mississippi is on the confiscatory end. Most Western states because of the way they design their highways register heavier truck combinations as a matter of course because a the highways are designed to handle the heavy weight, the heavier registration brings more revenue to the state, and there are fewer trucks required to move the same tonnage. That's why you only see longer combinations out west.
I don't know if you know or not but commercial vehicles are regularly weighed and inspected. There are weigh stations and dot trucks with scales. A commercial vehicle cannot just run with whatever weight is put on, they must comply with the rules or they will be shut down till they do. Not to mention fined heavily. Besides running heavy burns more fuel which makes transporting that load less economical. Freight rates are generally negotiated by contract for mileage though drayage operations will contract by weight generally.
I am afraid if you have a highway system you are always going to have construction of some sort and some states deal with it better than others. Sorry. As far a money goes a very large percentage of the highway fund is NOT spent on roads or bridges in the network, but spent on light rail bike paths, and my personal favorite beautification projects.
These roads would be paid for and then some if the money was spent as allocated. This one of my pet peeves. I shouldnt be having to buy suspension parts, repairing and aligning my equipment periodically if the roads where in good shape. These roads are costing me on top of the taxes I already pay.
As I stated earlier a lot of the roads that are built in California are built shoddily on purpose, because of cronyism. Most of the companies that get bids are very very well connected and get away with a lot of garbage you or I wouldn't be able to. In fact one of the companies out here that bids on projects is started owned an run by lawyers. I didn't know that lawyers were engineers or contractors. They make most of their money on projects by suing the state after the fact. We have one widening project in the bay area that has been going on for the last 20 years for basically a 10 mile stretch. If that don't tell you everything nothing will.
Anywho I hope you are enlightened by my explanation. I am a logistics company owner so this is what I do for a living. If you got more questions ask.