De-emphasizing Long-Haul Trucking

First a useful anecdote.  Some years back, I had an hour to kill with a furniture store owner.  Every month or so, he buys a container of furniture from Europe, puts it on a ship to Newark, and then uses a long haul truck to cross the country to his store in Bellevue.   I asked him why he didn't use a train, and he says the costs by train are only slightly lower, but it gets there a day and a half earlier by truck.  Consequently, he has a day and a half less lead time and inventory to pay for.  So it's worth it to him.

 

The bottom line is that long haul trucking is heavily subsidized by the taxpayers.  The trucks do 90% of the damage and pay 30% of the costs maintain our roads.  The non-truck taxpayers cover the rest, with our gas taxes, our property taxes and our income taxes.  Moreover, the energy consumption and pollution of trucks, per ton of payload, is 5 times that of trains, or more.   Trucks cause congestion.  Trucks have accidents (e.g. sleepy driver).   Etc.   The railroads have to pay their own maintenance but have much lower operating costs per ton, yet the subsidy for trucks is such that they're nearly competitive.

So I want to see the costs changed, such that trains are enough cheaper than trucks to overcome the lead time disadvantage, at least for durable goods.  The simple way to do this is to tax trucks, which is appropriate, since they're the ones damaging the roads.  I don't want to raise prices, so I think the way to do it is to have a long-haul penalty:  delivery trucks and the truck moving the container from the Seattle team track to the Bellevue furniture store wouldn't have to pay it, but transcontinentals would.  The threshold is probably under 50 miles.

pro:

   it reduces pollution, fuel use, congestion, road damage

   it generates extra business for the railroads

   it has no impact at all on short-haul trucking.

con:

   it puts long-haul teamsters out of work.

   it it adds a transfer and short-haul delivery to a lot of trips.

   it doesn't do much for road wear near urban areas.

   it's a little complicated

it should be cost neutral, or maybe even a slight saving.  In the long term, I think it'll wind up lowering costs substantially, because we won't be rebuilding the roads so often, and will be buying less fuel and paying fewer drivers as part of the cost of our furniture, etc.  Moreover, if there's demand for it, the railroads will increase capacity and will be able to get rid of a lot of the delays involved, which will lower costs further.  obviously the vested interests will fight back.

Some numbers:  two people (they're called engineer and fireman) in the cab of a locomotive can pull about 5000 tons of freight.  One truck driver can pull about 50 tons, and usually less.  this is a ratio of 50:1, measured in tons per operator.   A truck gets less than 2 mpg pulling a 50 ton load.  this works out to less than 100 ton-miles per gallon--at best.  Trains get 425 ton-miles per gallon these days.  Both burn diesel, and operator daily hour limits are similar.

(I originally wrote this in April 2009 for one of my train-buddies)

correction: 24 Jul 2014

The US Department of Transportation says that heavy trucks pay for half the damage they cause, while light trucks pay for 150% of the damage they cause.