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Comment by dmm | Hacker News Reader

The point isn't to preserve roads, but to expose the true cost of damage to the industry causing it. It can be phased in over time. Trucking will become more expensive and businesses will respond by optimizing transportation and raising prices. This will be offset by much lower taxes because trucks cause the vast majority of road damage from vehicles.

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Yes, this is the perfect time to do so, after all, what could possibly go wrong?

Really, there is a contingent on HN that seems utterly divorced from reality. The trucking industry as a whole profits ~30B annually in the United States. That is an absolutely insane number of miles hauled. Many of these operations are barely hanging on and whether or not 16 trucking companies going bankrupt in a month due to fuel prices is normal or not I couldn't tell you but on the off chance that it is this might not be the time to experiment with what other things you could do to that industry.

For contrast: Amazon profits number in the hundreds of billions (300B+ iirc) and that is just one company vs a whole industry.

Effectively that means that they are making pennies of profit per mile driven and that any kind of destabilization of that industry will instantly translate into either shortages or further price increases.

So you agree this externality should be internalized? What time in the past would have been better to implement this?

Maybe you're right and putting this off is the right decision. If we get automated trucking and those thousands of trucking companies are replaced with a handful of tech companies it might be easier to implement reforms.

Such a tax would be highly regressive I think.

When a government collects taxes they have to think how to invest that money to maximize gdp growth. Subsidizing road infrastructure is a pretty good use of those funds IMO, though admittedly I’m probably biased as a transportation engineer.

CA uses fuel taxes to fund road infrastructure, which isn’t the worst approach… the heaviest users (‘heavy’ both figuratively and literally) invariably pay the largest share, although EVs are messing up that equation.

> the heaviest users (‘heavy’ both figuratively and literally) invariably pay the largest share

But the point is that the heaviest users(semitrucks) cause almost all of the damage (literally >99%) but don't pay for most of the maintenance. This represents a subsidy of trucking companies. They cause damage that they don't pay for. This is an example of the economic concept of an externality, which is bad and should be eliminated.

How is saying "this business is barely viable" an argument for subsidizing it?

That you need it to survive.

Trucking is also one of the largest sources of employment in the country. It's quite literally the backbone not just because they haul so much, but because they are a massive source of income for families.

I'm not saying trucks are bad or that we should get rid of them or that truckers shouldn't be paid or anything like that. If we closed the externality of trucking causing more damage than they pay for then trucking and transportation would get better. The trucking companies would have more information to make decisions about what routes/equipment/etc are worthwhile.

All of the retailers and businesses were able to do business when new tariffs where introduced, which was complex, messy and changing weekly. The costs were passed on to consumers. Retailers and businesses that use trucking have really nothing to do, they get a bill just like now. Trucking remains as it was.

Then, its upto them to figure out more efficient means of logistics. Companies that can figure this out will survive in the marketplace. Competition weeds out inefficient companies.

None of the things you say happened when tariffs changed. All companies were fine and made more profits. The economy didn't collapse. (Source: See stock market and profits of companies)

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