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Comment by citizenpaul | Hacker News Reader

> pays 0 $/km for the roads,

That is really not true at least in the USA. There are all kinds of taxes and fees for using the roads with large trucks. Have you ever seen the weigh stations on the sides of the highway in the US? Those are there to fine the trucks for what they are carrying if it is beyond what is allowed among other things. You said km though so you probably are not in the US.

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Every state charges their own fee per mile to commercial trucks. Filing taxes as a long distance trucking company that operates in multiple states is pretty annoying.

There's also tax built in to every gallon of fuel.

There are also flat annual registration fees you have to pay as well.

Don’t forget the tolls for various highways, bridges, and tunnels as they’re almost always priced higher for vehicles with more than two axles.

Side point here, but that's a very justifiable cost. The damaged to a road is proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight [1]. That's something that amuses me when drivers complain that bike riders don't pay a "road tax". If they did, it would be a laughably low amount compared to what a car driver would have to pay in proportion.

[1] https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

It's not true in the EU either, plenty of countries have truck and trailer specific tolls. The average truck on the German autobahn, for example, pays €0.15 per kilometre.

Which roughly covers the actual damage large trucks do per km traveled and in no way covers construction costs.

More or less all EU members should charge freight road transport fees on highways and sometimes other roads too.

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