Road wear goes as fourth power of axle load. Freight haulers pay far less than their fair share of road repair. And I say this as someone who runs a buncha trucks, hauls a lot of weight, and puts a huge beating on the roads.
sidd
Link below to a report by the UK's Road Research Laboratory. And there is nothing Tusk can do about that basic science applied to axle weight and road pavement wear. I guess there is not a country in the world where truckers pay the full costs of road construction (much higher specification for roads that carry 40 tonners), maintenance and repair.
http://road-transport-technology.org/Proceedings/3%20-%20ISHVWD/Vehicle%20wheel%20loads%20and%20road%20pavement%20wear%20-%20Addis%20.pdfEXTRACT:-
THE FOURTH POWER LAWThe fourth power law was derived from
large-scale experiments carried out by the
American Association of State Highway Officials
(AASHO) between 1958 and 1961 (Highway Research
Board 1962). .....................
6. CONCLUSIONS1.
For most purposes, the fourth power law
relating structural wear in pavements and wheel
load is adequate; the results of the recent FORCE
experiment indicate that departures may arise
when considering a wide range of pavement
strengths, or the nature and degree of the
deterioration.
2. Measurements in a pavement under traffic
indicate that the effects on pavement life of
axle configuration differ according to whether
fatigue or deformation criteria are considered.
In general the results show that
the effects of
grouping are greater for triple axles than for
tandem axles.3. Measurements of
the effect of wide
single tyres, compared with the dual-tyre
arrangement, show an increase of approximately
50% in the two principal strain measurements
generated in a relatively thin pavement. This
increases pavement wear, in the case of fatigue,
by a factor of up to 2.5. Theoretical analysis of
the effects on thicker pavements indicates that
the factor will lie in the range 1.5 - 1.8 for
those pavement thicknesses commonly used for
carrying heavier traffic in the UK.
4. Although much is known about the effects
of different vehicle parameters on the magnitudes
of loads imposed on road pavements, the effects
of these varying loads at varying frequencies and
on changing longitudinal pavement profiles is
less well understood. Further work is necessary
on the prediction of the effects of interaction
between longitudinal pavement profile, the
vehicle, and the consequent pavement wear
resulting from the applied dynamic loading.