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ATA now supports longer and/or heavier trucks

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From the Railway Age news website: http://www.railwayage.com/breaking_news.shtml "The board of directors of the American Trucking Associations has voted to support legislation in Congress that would open highways to heavier and longer truck-trailer combinations." Now, before pro-railroad fans get all hyped about this, stop and think for a moment: For what possible reason would Class I railroads continue to oppose increased weight and length limits for trucks? After all, railroads are almost completely dependent on trucks to get the goods to and/or from the railhead. How does limiting the ability to trucks to participate in the multimodal supply chain favor railroads in any way? Are there still Neanderthals out there who believe that trucks are primarily competition for mainline railroads, and not supplementation to railroads? Granted, increased truck weights could negatively affect some shortlines, and there may be some minimal effect on railroads which compete with truck/barge combinations, but run of the mill long haul railroads? No way. Even if trucking companies are allowed to run triple trailers or 160k GVW loads over most of the Interstate Highway system, that is still barely a dent in the railroad efficiency advantage. Conversely, such increases would allow for greater supply chain efficiencies, which enables the continued growth of the economy, which in turn is the main driver for the current railroad business upturn. As long as per axle weight limits remain consistent (or are actually lowered for heavier trucks), an increase in GVW will not have any more negative effects on highway damage, and on a per unit of cargo perspective, will actually result in less road damage because the increase in load factor is greater than any ostensible increase in road damage. The main reason most Americans should actually support such highway weight and length increases is that such favors domestic production, while having a benign effect on imports. We have a trade deficit folks, and part of the blame lies with transportation policies that favor imports over domestic production. After some form of federally mandated intramodal rail competition, this increase in highway weights and lengths is the second best way to ameliorate US transportation system contributions to the trade deficit.
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