logoalt Hacker News

sirponm12/08/20251 replyview on HN

Walmart uses it a lot more than I do. Civeng principles show that road damage rises to the fourth power of axle weight, a fully loaded tractor-trailer does roughly 10k times structural damage of a passenger car but they definitely don't pay that amount.

And yeah the government is consistently incompetent. But there's no incentive for them to be competent in the first place. Either a mostly exempt-from-competiton company does it badly or a fully exempt-from-competition state does it badly in our system.


Replies

WalterBright12/08/2025

I know about the fatigue damage problem, and have advocated that higher taxes should be put on the trucks.

Anyhow, the most efficient travel for freight is by rail. But due to all the mismanagement by the government, it remains cheaper to ship by truck. You cannot really blame capitalism for that.