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So how do you feel about the giant subsidy that tractor trailer's receive?
https://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/
"Heavy trucks obviously cause more road damage than cars, but how much more? According to a GAO study, Excessive Truck Weight: An Expensive Burden We Can No Longer Afford, road damage from one 18-wheeler is equivalent to 9600 cars (p.23 of study, p.36 of PDF).
The study assumed a fully loaded tractor-trailer at 80,000 pounds, and a typical passenger car at 4,000 pounds. That’s 20 times difference in weight, but the wear and tear caused by the truck is exponentially greater."
What about what I wrote makes you think I'd think differently about trucks?
As a general rule I'm in favor of people paying for the services and infrastructure they use including upkeep. That would mean trucks paying more for using highways since trucks obviously cause more road deterioration than cars.
The excerpt talks about road damage caused by 80,000 tractor trailers being equivalent to the damage caused by 9600 cars. That's a nice bit of information but it doesn't at all speak to how much of that cost trucks are avoiding so it's impossible to judge whether there is a "subsidy" or not. All we know from the information provided is that trucks do more damage and that it's likely more than we would assume from the weight difference alone.
I'd also point out that the linked GAO report is almost 40 years old and some of the data it references, including the 9600 car number, is nearly 60 years old. A lot has changed in the intervening years making drawing any conclusions based on this one study iffy at best. The situation could be worse or better today. No way to know.
I didn't read the entire study, it's 150 pages, but I did read the summary and it doesn't speak about trucks getting a giant subsidy but about over-weight trucks causing excessive road damage - presumably in excess of the usage fees they're paying. The states that something like 22% of trucks are overweight. That certainly sounds like an enforcement issue, but it hardly sounds like a subsidy to the trucking industry.