How Much Should They Pay?

THE U.S. is a nation on wheels. Yet the roads under those wheels are in poor shape. Former Commissioner of Public Roads Thomas H. MacDonald estimated that 75,000 miles of the nation's main highways are "critically deficient," and that "we are falling behind in their rebuilding at the rate of 5,000 miles a year." Other experts, such as New York City's Park Commissioner Robert Moses, warn that the U.S. must double its road-building outlays over the next ten years to $5 billion annually. The big question is: Where should the money come from?

Nearly everyone agrees that a good part of the money should come from license fees, gas taxes, etc. from those who use the roads. But how should the burden be split between the nation's 43 million private cars and 9 million trucks? The answer, a subject of bitter wrangling in every state legislature, has been fogged by propaganda fumes from the trucking industry, one of the most powerful lobbies in the U.S., and a smoke screen of publicity from the railroads, archfoes of the truckers.

Almost all state officials who have investigated the matter agree that the trucking industry is not paying its fair share of highway costs. Scientific highway tests have proved that huge trailer trucks do far more damage to U.S. roads--and hence make it necessary to build heavier, more expensive roadbeds--than the more numerous passenger cars. And the possibilities of road damage increase far faster than the increase in truck weight; e.g., tests showed that a 22,400-10. axle load caused 6.4 times as much road cracking as an 18,000-lb load. A recent New York State study showed that funds needed to build 737 miles of heavy truck roads would build 26,000 miles of roads to be used only by cars.

Truckers, while usually disputing such figures, point out that of all the highway usage taxes, license fees, gasoline and other road levies collected, they pay about one-third. But the truckers do not come off as well when an axle-weight or weight-distance figure, better measures of highway wear & tear, are used. A New York tax organization estimates that on an average, the man who drives a four-door Plymouth with a gross weight of 3,450 Ibs. pays 34.64-c- worth of gas taxes and fees to move his car over 100 miles of open road. Yet the owner of a truck with a gross weight of 60,000 Ibs. pays only 12.49-c- to move his truck the same distance, while doing far more damage to the road.

Over the years, 14 states have passed laws of one kind or another to tax trucks on their weight and distance traveled, and thus made the highway tax load more equitable. The result is a hodgepodge of conflicting state legislation, which causes truckers to complain--legitimately--that the burden does not fall equally on local and transcontinental lines, and that long haul trucks are often unfairly penalized. But the trucking industry, a burly, brawling youngster which owes much of its growth to World War II, has not helped its case by its frequent contempt for present laws, fair or not. In Georgia, where trucks are limited to a weight of 18,000 Ibs. per axle, many truckers send out spotters in plain cars who pass the word whenever they find a state crew setting up scales along a highway to catch overloaders. (Even so, Georgia last month found that 5% of the trucks checked were guilty of overloading.) In Illinois, where truckers may file their own reports on ton-miles traveled, some boast openly of getting away with false reports to the state. In 1951 in Missouri, Forrest Smith, then governor, publicly stated that he understood money had changed hands on the floor of the legislature to defeat a bill to increase truck license fees.

Truck schedules are often set with little regard for the speed laws. In California, a truck obeying all speed and traffic regulations would need 15 hours to drive the 400 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles, yet the normal schedule of most trucking lines is ten or twelve hours. Last month California's logging truckers, who have been overloading by as much as 4,000 Ibs., showed their contempt for a new program to enforce legal weight limitations by "picketing" state weighing stations with their trucks and blocking the roads.

In cities and along the open roads of the U.S., trucks have long been such an extra traffic hazard that it has even been suggested that the trucking industry raise funds for an entire new system of roads for itself. In Boston, for example, the truck-snarled traffic is so bad that a new express road is referred to laughingly as "a new, fast link between two bottlenecks."

No one wants to force trucks off U.S. roads, since they carry 15% of the nation's freight, and are a vital part of the economy. But even some truckers realize that it is time for the trucking industry to face the fact that its own future lies in a constructive approach to the highway problem. Unless the truckers do, U.S. motorists, who far outnumber the truckers, may well insist on even tighter regulations than now bind the railroads.

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