Fly on A Windshield

[daveklepper]

SALfan and RRnut, Hooray for you.  Write your Congressment and Senators!

[NorthWest]

https://freight.amazon.com/blog/article/blog-full-truck

Amazon is expanding its role as a freight broker.

Another step towards Freight Mobility as a Service or the Uberization of trucking.

This will be interesting to follow going forward.

[JPS1]

As per Status of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, Table FE210, in 2016 – latest reported numbers - trucks generated directly or indirectly 37.7 percent of the HTF revenues. 

 

As per Table I-35, Vehicle Miles, U.S. National Transportation Statistics, in FY17 single-unit 2-axle 6-tire or more trucks and combination trucks – five axles or more – accounted for 9.2 percent of vehicle miles traveled. 

 

Light duty vehicle, long-wheel based vehicles, which includes some commercial delivery vehicles, as well as Billy Bob’s pick-up, accounted for 20.4 percent of the vehicle miles traveled. 

 

Passenger cars, which include SUVs, accounted for 69.1 percent of the miles.  The remainder were accounted for by buses and motorcycles. 

 

So, trucks of all classes accounted for 9.2 percent of the vehicle miles traveled in 2017, but generated approximately 38 percent of HTF revenues before transfers and adjustments. 

 

Most trucking firms also pay federal and state income taxes.  A portion of them find their way into the transfers from the General Fund(s) to the HTF.  In 2016 the federal transfer to HTF was $50.9 billion, but this amount was for a five-year period beginning in 2017. 

 

The issue is not whether truckers pay more for the roadways they use than other users - they do as shown above; the issue is whether they pay an appropriate  proportional share – higher build standards and more maintenance - to build and maintain the roadways that they use.

 

The truckers don’t pay for the roadways.  The people who buy the goods shipped on the trucks pay for them.  The cost of transportation is baked into the price of the goods people buy nearly every day.  Increasing the cost truckers pay will ultimately be paid by the consumers. 

[alphas]

Last I heard from individuals who worked in the PA Transportation Institute about 4-5 years ago, modern trucks caused anywhere from 6 to 10 times the damages vs. what they were paying in fuel taxes. 

The best solution they could give me back then was a combination of increasing diesel fuel taxes, get rid of the requirements that Davis-Bacon and other prevailing wage labor laws impose including those requiring only union labor, reform all the endless rules that delay construction for years, modernize the standars governing how much concrete & base are required, stop contracting with companies that have mob ties, and rquire a work performance bond of enough magnatude and length that you don't have to worry about the roads rapidly deteriorating.

The only one of those that has started to happen has been some reduction of federal rules that happened in the last several years under the current administration. 

Road contractor associations actively lobby against increasing initial standards and accountablity.      They tend to be based in a geographical area and once roads, etc. are built they want enough continous repairwork coming their way until there's once again major construction in their area.   

Unions will fight any changes to the current system and continue to try and get it mandated that all Federal & State highway projects have to be union labor only.     Obama mandaed unions for his "shovel ready" program which was one of the reasons it never got close to its promises.    Since the majority of the states actually have very few union contractors, that and his failure to reduce the delays for construction projects were major reasons for the program basically being a dud.   Biden is calling for another "shovel ready" program if elected but if he runs it like Obama did it will most likely have similar results.

Whatever the answers are, the customers will be paying more for the products shipped.      The only exception to that would be products produced locally where transortation costs aren't a significant factor.

[Bruce D Gillings]

JPS1 said:

The truckers don’t pay for the roadways.  The people who buy the goods shipped on the trucks pay for them.  The cost of transportation is baked into the price of the goods people buy nearly every day.  Increasing the cost truckers pay will ultimately be paid by the consumers. 

And the consumers pay even if the truckers don't pay.  You either pay indirect hidden costs - that is, you pay for it yourself but have no idea you are because your little Prius is paying disproportionately high - or you pay through the increased costs of the goods you purchase.  Either way, you pay.  It doesn't appear out of thin air, or disappear into thin air.  The point is pretty simple: when freight moves by rail, you, the consumer, have the opportunity to pay less overall. Because the wear and tear caused by trucks on the road is reduced when a more cost-effective way of competeing exists. 

 

Unfortunately, when that cost is hidden, and YOU are paying through your fuel costs and road use fees disproportionately, you think trucks are a bargain. Target, Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, whoever, gets to pay less for trucking than they really should. And all the while, OTR trucking looks better by comparison than rail, either intermodal or carload. 

 

We will never get trucking to pay its true costs of road impact wear and tear. Our current political environment (likely to exist many, many years after most of us are gone) will not allow it. The solution? Give freight railroads 100% or 90% or 80% tax credits for anything related to infrastructure improvements to mitigate to a reasonable extent the hidden subsidy that imbalanced impact cost allocation creates. Make investing in additional main tracks, sidings, terminals, streamlining of 19th Century alignments far less risky, and far less costly, for railroads. Incentivize freight infrastructure investment to the point that management is not at risk of being booted out for growing the franchise. 

No matter what is done, the consumer always pays for it. They pay the least when transportation is provided in the most cost-effective way. And that, when looking at every aspect of costs, is rail - with a very big caveat.  That being: rail mangement and operational institutional knowledge is falling apart.  PSR - which is anything BUT precision and scheduled, is taking railroading down a drain counter to what the world of logistics wants. Railroad management is blinded by their own costs, and is oblivious to the true costs of theri collapsing service metrics on supply chains. And thus the race to lower costs is a race to the bottom of transporation relevancy.  Lower costs in railroading through lower rates often mean increased costs to supply chains who use rail.  And so the it goes.

 

Unfortunately, the methodology used to identify that, by hiding true costs, skews the game against rail. Something has to change, or we'll be left with a handful of bulk routes, commuter rail, and a handful of Amtrak "corridors". 

 

Complaining about how bad the roads are now is pointless.  The public is too busy being entertained by "America's Got Talent" or whatever news outlet appeals to their notions of reality to give a damn about truck damage to roads. At some point they'll just keep paying more taxes, one way or another. Change how railroad investment in infrastructure is treated or get your pictures now of freight trains: they're a dying breed.  

 

[JPS1]

Bruce D Gillings

JPS1 said:

The truckers don’t pay for the roadways.  The people who buy the goods shipped on the trucks pay for them.  The cost of transportation is baked into the price of the goods people buy nearly every day.  Increasing the cost truckers pay will ultimately be paid by the consumers. 

The point is pretty simple: when freight moves by rail, you, the consumer, have the opportunity to pay less overall. 

Not necessarily.  I have a difficult time believing that shipping goods to a Walmart or my HEB by rail would be more cost effective than moving it by truck. 

Some of the stuff at Walmart comes from overseas, and it is shipped in containers by rail to distribution centers.  But it is trucks that make it economical to get it to the store.  And this would be true even if the fuel tax paid by trucks was doubled.  

A 2000 study released by DOT, based on 1998 data, found that five axle trucks paid approximately 60 percent of the cost to build and maintain the highways they use.  But other trucks paid their fair share, with some trucks paying more than their fair share.  The results are dated, but they highlight an important point.  Not all trucks have the same impact on the roadways that they use.

To know how much damage a truck does to the roadways, one would have to take a sample from every type of roadway surface in every geographical region of the country under various weather conditions.  It would also be necessary to normalize the data for the different classes of trucks and the varying loads that they carry.  A Frito-Lay truck hauling potato and corn chips, even when fully loaded, would have a different impact than a gravel truck.  It would be a daunting task.

I suspect most of the studies have relied on computer modeling to come up with their findings.  One should be cautious of computer models, although I have used them for a long time, because of the difficultly in loading them with precise, verifiable data.

In March, as COVID-19 became a problem in the central Texas community where I live, the University of Texas used its modeling expertise to convince the county judge that 17.8 percent of the population would come down with COVID-19.  To date the percentage of people contracting the disease is 8 tenths of 1%.  And the curve in the county is bending downward.

[blue streak 1]

Well our I-85 south of  Atlanta has evidence.  Near the weigh station the outside lanes are so bad tht all drivers in the know always drive in the left lane.  GDOT is trying to repair but already one repair is failing.  The right lane overall is a killer to cars suspension.

Last trip to NYC rode on several of the no truck parkways. Original pavement is still good 60 years later.

[Bruce D Gillings]

My apologies for not being clearer: over the years my comments regarding trucks/railroads have referred to line-haul intermodal vs. OTR.

 

I believe that rail/truck line haul/dray partnership is the most viable method of volume hauls where lane density justifies it. Not current rail lane density, but rather OTR lane density. Delivery trucks within several hundred miles will normally be the most cost-effective.  Longer, combine it with rail service WHEN it can meet supply chain needs (it usually cannot these days). I am not suggesting that rail replace the truck from a Walmart DC to a store, or an Amazon fulfillment center to your home, or a Sysco Ops Center to a restaurant. But far more market pairs than railroads now serve can support intermodal – quality intermodal (almost an oxymoron) – in trains or blocks.

 

I am on the development/design/build side of industrial facilities; have been since the 1980s. Of the hundreds over the years, only two of them are regular rail users (that is, carload). With those two exceptions, every other facility I’ve done (and am still doing) is 100% trucking. That includes intermodal.  I can’t profess to know all the ins and outs of operations. But I do know trucking is the lifeblood of non-bulk operations. I would never suggest that when we build a large DC in Southern CA’s Inland Empire that a train replace a ready-mix concrete truck or flatbead hauling steel from a fabricator in Central CA than a train replace a drayage truck from the ports to the finished DC.

 

Cost-effectiveness in today’s world: the lowest RATE being charged (when it is rail) is not necessarily the lowest COST in the supply chain. Using rail, whether it is carload or intermodal, may have a lower rate than OTR, but it often has a higher cost to the supply chain providers, whether direct transportation cost or the value loss from the inability to reliably meet customer demands. That is almost entirely the result of the culture of railroad management that has existing for decades, and now becomes exacerbated by the PSR race to the bottom that is unresponsive and unaware of how supply chains are changing. Rail relevancy is disappearing. Loose-car railroading is nearing the point of unsustainability of the needed siding/branch/yard infrastructure. If railroads disappeared entirely tomorrow, we would be fine, although a bit bruised. If trucking disappeared our consumer economy as we know it would collapse.

 

There are many studies with a large range of road wear impacts from trucking (both OTR and delivery/drayage). Years ago I responded to a post referencing a handful of them with quite a wide range; you can search for that. Most focus on maintenance impacts.  Some reports suggest trucking rates would  increase 5% if they paid true maintenance costs; some say 10%; some say 25%. Of course those are rounded, simplified numbers.  Some reports don’t look at original engineering/construction costs on roadway sections and bridges. That is huge. More important, they don’t identify that, by having road infrastructure be a government responsibility, the cost of RISK to users – trucks – does not exist.

 

The per-lane-per-mile front-in cost of the infrastructure of I-84 across Montana is comparable to the cost of I-15 between Barstow and Provo: the truck traffic differences are huge. The trucker has no risk in that front-in cost, and does not need to borrow anything to pay it back. (of course they pay through their taxes, disproportionately low), They only pay when used, even though taxpayers/government built the world-class infrastructure. No risk. Railroads, by contrast, not only have to pay the direct risk cost of capital, but if traffic patterns change, they continue paying for those front-in costs. Huge risk. The decision to invest becomes far more consequential to them than OTR trucking. Rail is dealing with more of a “pure capitalism”; trucking is not. Railroads cannot compete from an investment standpoint. I’m not saying we should not invest in roads: I’m saying that we should completely change how we treat infrastructure investment for all modes. I think that is where you would find a much more robust rail freight network. Mostly intermodal (you know, where the trucks handle the end moves….). 

 

The only way I can see railroad management culture changing is if the investment environment ever changes.  Which I seriously doubt it ever will.

[JPS1]

The most efficient and effective way to achieve a balanced transport system would be for everyone to see the fully allocated cost of their mode of transportation at the price point, i.e. ticket, pump, etc., and pay it.

 

Unfortunately, given the politics surrounding transportation, it will never happen.  And so those with the loudest voices and deepest pockets will win favor for their choice at the expense of others that will have to make up the difference.

 

The subsidies associated with U.S. transport are mind boggling.  Attempting to determine who gets what and when would challenge the best of forensic accountants and/or investigators. 

[JPS1]

Commercial trucks, airlines, barges, etc. have the advantage of sharing common infrastructure.  They share the front and ongoing costs with non-commercials users.  As noted, however, the railroads have to front the cost of their infrastructure and maintain it.

 

The question of whether the commercial users of the common facilities pay their fair share will be argued until the cows come home.  The issue will never be resolved satisfactorily for some if not all of the commercial users of the common facilities.

 

One way around the dilemma would be to have an independent, third part operator own the railroad infrastructure, and rent space on it to any operator that could meet the operating, safety, and health standards.   This is how the electric transmission system in Texas works.  But I don’t think the railroads would ever go for it.

[Erik_Mag]

JPS1

To know how much damage a truck does to the roadways, one would have to take a sample from every type of roadway surface in every geographical region of the country under various weather conditions.  It would also be necessary to normalize the data for the different classes of trucks and the varying loads that they carry.  A Frito-Lay truck hauling potato and corn chips, even when fully loaded, would have a different impact than a gravel truck.  It would be a daunting task.

I suspect most of the studies have relied on computer modeling to come up with their findings.  One should be cautious of computer models, although I have used them for a long time, because of the difficultly in loading them with precise, verifiable data.

Especially with anything to do with extremely non-linear behavior. I suspect that road damage has a lot of threshold effects such as a concrete road with a bit of the underlying roadbed eroded away. The concrete could be strong enough to allow a large number of autos to cross over, but then could break with the first truck. The threshold in this case would depend on the strength and thickness of the concrete, the size of erosion, characteristics of the roadbed, etc.

In March, as COVID-19 became a problem in the central Texas community where I live, the University of Texas used its modeling expertise to convince the county judge that 17.8 percent of the population would come down with COVID-19.  To date the percentage of people contracting the disease is 8 tenths of 1%.  And the curve in the county is bending downward.

The impression I have is that the process of how COVID-19 infects people is not known well enough to create a reasonable model from first principles. A couple of big unknowns are how many infections are asymptomatic (or nearly so) and how many people have some immunity based on prior exposure to other coronaviruses.

It was interesting to see the updating of the IHME model, seeing it was so-so in modeling Pacific coast states, grossly underestimating NYC and overestimating places like Wyoming. Best description of the model was "a curve fitting exercize".

 

[JPS1]

Erik_Mag

Thanks for your perspectives.  Very helpful!

[Overmod]

Erik_Mag

I suspect that road damage has a lot of threshold effects such as a concrete road with a bit of the underlying roadbed eroded away. The concrete could be strong enough to allow a large number of autos to cross over, but then could break with the first truck. The threshold in this case would depend on the strength and thickness of the concrete, the size of erosion, characteristics of the roadbed, etc.

Some of the effects are highly nonlinear, both in terms of momentum and contact pressure.  Not much modeling is required to produce meaningful models in a number of respects demonstrable in regular experience.

The impact of surface abrasion, in part due to high tire pressure and poor suspension compliance, can be graphically demonstrated in a couple of European 'guided rubber-tired tram' systems, a couple of which we discussed in this respect a few months ago.  This need not be propagating 'point defects' in pavement leading to potholing, or progressive distortion of asphalt structure; a particular example was the original construction of I-20 east from Shreveport, built as 20' slabs with control joints between them but tied longitudinally by tendons. Shock at the joints over time resulted in these slabs rocking up at the 'front' progressively so that traversing the pavement in any lane was climbing a number of short relatively sharp grades followed by rebound weight transfer onto the back.  It was impossible to take this at any particular speed in anything but a softly-sprung vehicle with relatively long suspension travel; there was no economical 'fix' (like mud-jacking to level) other than physically breaing up the slabs, changing a significant depth of subgrade, and re-laying the whole shebang.  This has been done a number of other places, notably I-40 in east Arkansas, and is notable because vehicles even up to the size of class 4 trucks don't produce the impact necessary to start the slab rotation; I consider it comparable to the types of rail and roadbed damage with HAL above 315K where things like cold flow in the railhead steel become nonlinear beyond the elastic limit.