3 ms·

If trucks had to pay the full cost of road wear, then trains would be a lot more attractive for long hauls -- road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle

• Dylan16807 9y ago
  Sort of. It looks like a car does about 4x more damage per axle because of using a single narrow tire[1]. If you compare a pretty typical 4000 pound car to that maxed-out truck, you would then only get a 64x difference (maybe closer to 100 depending on weight distribution). Oh and then multiply by the number of axles. It would be interesting to look at the costs and savings of 6 or 8 axles in the back. There's plenty of room to fit, and you could drop wear by a factor of 10. Let's also not forget that the truck probably has over a hundred times as much payload as an average car. [1] http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=601 http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=601