But not nearly higher enough. Driving on roads damages them in proportion to the fourth power of per-axle weight, which is about 17,000lbs for a fully loaded semi and 2,000lbs for a car. To put that in perspective, if the toll for the car were $0.25, it'd have to be over $1,300 for the truck for it to be fair in that sense.
It will just raise shipping costs and therefore raise the cost of goods. By charging trucks more it creates a regressive tax effectively. By subsidizing them this is a way we utilize socialism to ensure lower wage people have access.
Well the tax increase on trucks can be accompanied by some other tax decrease that mostly affects poorer people, such as a sales tax decrease or an income tax rate decrease in the lowest bracket.
They move a bunch of freight by rail, nobody wants to pay someone a bunch of money to drive it when they can just throw it on a train.
And trains are relatively time inefficient so people in Maine couldn’t have their fresh Californian strawberries a couple days after they are plucked out of the field.
Maybe people don’t deserve to have fresh produce but that’s another discussion altogether.
Did you know that one of the very first uses of the first transcontinental railroad was shipping fresh California produce back east? And this was a century and a half ago.
They used ice in the old days. Strawberries will last up to 6 days if you refrigerate them coming home from the store, I don't know how long that is since they were picked.
It’s quite common for me to show up at a shipper in the morning and whatever I’m picking up is still in the field. I’ve even had stuff loaded straight into the trailer out of the field a few times.
