Sprouts and Max,

The numbers I've seen show that trucks are responsible for 85% of "road wear" requiring road repairs and maintenance, largely a function of weight, but pay only about 30% of road fees. Then there is the vastly higher construction costs of our roads, freeways, and bridges to safely carry those much heavier loads. We've added nearly 50% to the weight of trucks on our roads by "act of congress" since the interstates were originally designed and built, accelerating deterioration of those roads. So the damage done has gone up by as much as 200% from those increased truck weights (it's some of that exponential math kind of things....).

We Americans pay less for logistics costs (among the lowest in the world) as a percentage of the cost of goods, as consumers, and a very tiny part of that is as a result of having some of the lowest road use fees in the industrialized world, while the rest of us subsidize that use.

The problem this economist has is that instead of paying those costs, through the cost of the goods carried in my choice of purchases, I am forced by our "evil" "gubmint" to transfer more of my wealth that subsidy in the road fees that we all pay, than we get back in cost savings for those goods.

Then, of course, there is the cost I paid for two new tires in less than four years (over $500 out off my pocket) that were destroyed by the pavement damage in the two blowouts I had on the 210, to "subsidize" the trucking industry, which I cannot now spend on trains.....or any thing else.

I have seen the technologies to reduce road damage from trucks and the technology to properly and efficiently charge trucks for proportional use and road damage. It has now been available for over 30 years, including technology to enforce hours of service and safe operations. But, here we have come to a point in the USA where we now have the best "gubmint" that money can buy and the hottest lobbyist in that industry to buy it, so we don't use that technology, so our politicians can keep getting the payola, to give the trucks a "free ride".

So when I hear some of these folks claiming to be "conservatives" on this issue, while whining about having to pay for the common "goods" that they all seem to use, that are paid for and provided by our society through "evil" taxes, by our "evil" (democratically chosen, consensus based, constitutionally restrained and limited form of...)"gubmint", I just have a good laugh, and remember that the US is still reportedly 43rd in the world in adult math and science "literacy" (actually numeracy).