I found this article on CNN about a bill proposed to raise the GVWR on the roads and it had me thinking. Will this help or hurt the trucking industry? Sure it'll save on the amount of rigs on the road, but where will the excess drivers go? I thought it was interesting and wondered what you guys thought.. Link to article: http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/01/travel/big-trucks/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
I could see it helping some truck drivers, but generally hurt the industry. The drivers and owner/operators stand to lose the most. Now it could reduce shipping prices, a possible benefit for the general public. Of course, the question is what percentage of loads would be affected by these changes?
As has always been the case, some drivers retire, no longer pass their medicals and now regulations are going to dictate them out of rigs across the nation and keep them out, sometimes permanently, so there might end up being a greater need for drivers than are drivers available. Now for the regulations, in most every state there already is a permit to allow this weight to be hauled now, just not for everyone, as for the bridge debate, maybe in the past 50 years if the money allotted for the updates was actually used for that purpose instead of being spent elsewhere, maybe the bridges wouldn't be in such bad shape now. What some forget is everyday, things are made bigger, machines everywhere and the need to haul bigger stuff needs to be addressed, it needs to get from point A to point B all the time. If things never changed, I'm sure we'd still be hauling loads weighing maybe 20 ton a single axle semi and single axle trailer. If the axle loads and tire limits are the same, except for bridges, whats the harm? Highways decay everyday under any conditions, its not just semi traffic that destroys them its all forms of vehicles and the amount of them traveling the highways everyday that does the damage, if in doubt look at roads that semi's are restricted from, they wear out too, even without truck traffic on them. Also if you want to compare numbers, on a per vehicle basis, semi's pay the highest road use tax as well, in the form of fuel taxes everyday, so a vehicle that gets barley 5 mpg and travels 150k miles per years contributes way more dollars back to the system than a car getting 45 mpg and driven 20k miles per year, so in the long run semi's contribute substantial dollars back into the roads they drive on everyday too, why not cater to the industry as a whole that contributes the most back to the system? As for safety, we could address that some, but maybe start with a level playing field, when every driver in every vehicle needs a medical certificate and has to abide by the same regulations as cdl drivers do, maybe start there first, they all in fact travel the same roads together every day, in my area cell phones have been regulated out of trucks, how about all vehicles? How come someone with a medical condition can't drive a truck but can drive any vehicle under the cdl requirements?, do they drive on separate roads?, how about drivers hours of service?, logbooks, and the best one, how about fuel tax and being issued a dot number and a drivers points system for everyone? and don't forget the random drug testing the owner of the vehicle pays for, up to 4 chances per year to be sampled, after all we all travel the same roads and why would we want anyone using drugs behind any wheel of any vehicle causing accidents?