Should lorries pay nothing?
Throughout human history people have tried to argue that they are special and therefore should not follow the rules and conventions that might apply to others. It is no surprise to find that Roger King, Chief Executive of the Road Haulage Association (like the ETA also based in Weybridge), is lobbying government with the idea that lorries should not have to pay road user charges.
He recently said “Whatever they (the national government) want to do for the motorists is one thing, but we say hands off the truck because it has no part in the road pricing programme.”
Of course, Roger King would not be serving his members if he acquiesced to every new constraint introduced by government but to say that somehow lorries should not be part of a road-user charging scheme is taking the micky.
There are many aspects that could be calibrated into a road-user charge perhaps the most obvious is the cost to provide and 
maintain the road itself. Trucks need roads. Modern trucks need roads that have firm foundations, strong bridges, low gradients and high tunnels. A road built to meet truck specifications is much more expensive than one built for a family car. So trucks should not be free but pay more than cars. Road maintenance required for trucks is far more expensive than for cars. You have probably noticed it yourself that the driving lane on a motorway gets rutted by trucks whereas the second or third overtaking lanes are smooth. This is because trucks give the road surface a severe beating.
I am told that, in broad terms, road surface damage is a factor of axle weight to the fourth power. In other words, an axle of four tons is sixteen times as damaging than an axle of two tons.
On this basis, again in broad terms, a six-axle lorry is 10,000 times more damaging per mile – yes ten thousand times more damaging – to a road surface than Britain’s most popular car the Ford Focus. And the average truck does many more miles than the average car.
Far from letting truckers not to pay a road-user charge they should pay at least 10,000 times more per mile than an average car. At that ratio perhaps trucks could pay for all the maintenance and cars could go free!
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Comments
lorry running costs
i have a company which does not carry goods for other people or can do return trips with a load which earns money, i have a tanker jetter which cleans road gullies and only carries water for cleaning ,and silt and debris which is removed from the drains .
my running costs for a 17.5 ton lorry on twin axle is very high for the amount of work which is acheived in a day as most of the time ithe lorry is going to fill up with water between jobs and not cleaning.
as for damage which is done to the road surface this would be no problem in my case as i spend most of the time stood in one place and only moveing to the next gully, this is not the only trade which is going to be offected by large increases in fuel and road tax but not able to earn extra money to cover costs.
Gully Cleaning
I used to be a gully cleaner. I appreciate that like other utility vehicles costs could change with the introduction of the ETA proposals. I suspect however that relative to other lorries their costs would decrease. Remember that in my original blog I was talking about the relative costs between the various vehicles on the road. A low-mileage, low-speed seventeen ton truck is not going to have the road damage profile of a high-mileage, max-speed forty ton truck. In any case, the ETA would, over time, reduce VED to nil.
Lorries 10,000 factor
Lorries should pay 10,000 more than cars...but if cars went free - then zero x 10,000 is nothing, so lorries would be free as the RHA asked for!
llm
well said
Well Spotted
Assuming my analysis was correct (indeed there are other considerations) I was only arguing the proportion of average car cost compared to average lorries cost for road maintenance. So if maintenance cost nothing then everyone would pay nothing. However, if there was a cost, and there is, then some lorries should pay 10,000 times as much as some cars.
Should lorries pay nothing?
So, will you be happy if trucks do pay 10k times what a car pays, if yes then please dont moan when you are asked to pay 10k times what you now pay for your shopping. Trucks pay thousands of pounds in road tax, (incidently they pay road tax rates that are set by the Government) they also consume huge quantities of diesel at £1.30 a litre, thats around £5.85 per gallon at around 8-miles per gallon & about half of that is also tax that the Government takes, so if you want the trucks to pay your cars costs as well then be prepared to pay far far more for everything that is moved by road, & thats almost everything.
If the Government were to build roads that could take the weights of vehicles that they allow on the roads then the roads would last longer, surely if they allow these weights they should construct the roads to take that weight, they surely charge trucks enough in both direct & indirect taxes to drive on roads in the UK which are in the main sub standard by even Polands standards.
Anyway, car drivers (& yes I am one) can use public transport, not so the trucks, have you ever tried getting 26-pallets of freight on a bus), these are essential vehicles, essential to our economy, to jobs & to the price of goods in our shops, as only by moving goods in large quantities can the cost be kept to an acceptable level that we want to pay from the retailers.
Have you thought why the cost of goods & food has risen sharply recently, look at the cost of fuel, it costs £400 to fill the tanks of a large truck that does around 8-miles per gallon, thats twice as much as it was a few years ago & where does the extra money go, straight to the Government in taxation.
Dont keep knocking the transport industry, we can live without heavy trucks if we replace them, but that would mean 44 x 1-ton transit vans on the road for every 44-tonner, would that keep you happy.
Please dont forget, that if you tax British trucks off the road then they will simply be replaced with foreign trucks & they dont pay UK road tax, they buy cheaper fuel from abroad, so dont contribute anything for the UK economy & dont pay a single penny for the damage that they do to our roads.
We are so quick to blame the truck for everything but we will all moan when trucks are running at far lower weights & goods are having to be shipped on to many many smaller trucks instead of just 1.
The transport industry in the UK can do nothing right but lets see how the UK manages for just one week with all the trucks off the roads, no bread, no fuel, no goods, no jobs - when will the persecution & over taxation of the UK transport industry end?
Trains, planes and automobiles (and trucks!)
Use trains!! A train use far far less fuel per kg of load per mile (if a train carries only around 100 times more than a lorry, then the air resistance is 100 times less per kg of load (as a train's frontage is about the same as a lorry). Furthermore, fuel is wasted most on acceleration - think how much a lorry stops and starts compared to a train!!
Trains are the most fuel efficient methods of transport but with a high infrastructure cost. It can't happen overnight but Britain should develop its infrastructure in railways - we have hundreds of decommissioned ones that could be reopened. Lorries should be smaller, hence exponentially reducing the road maintenance cost and used only for the small deliveries from train depots to end users (supermarkets, factories etc.).
I don't blame the truck, because the truck has its place - I blame the national government overlooking trains and hence poorly manging our infrastructure. There are just as many jobs to be had with a train infrastructure but with much cheaper and environmentally better rewards.
Trains, planes and automobiles (and trucks!)
Which planet do you live on?
Trains, planes and automobiles (and trucks)
Well he lives on the right planet. I agree with everything he says, lorries are a menace on the roads and use loads of fuel. In fact, if a lorry needed to be equivilent to a train it would need to do 150-200mpg, and a freight train will do the work of 60-120 44-ton lorries. Even if the bigger lorries were introduced, freight trains will get longer to out haul the lorries, so either way the train is the best and greenest way to transport freight, it still works out cheaper to unload the freight off/on train to road transport for a short distance to/from the shop, or certain industry. TRAINS RULE AND LORRIES DON'T but we need both and we need to see more freight from the roads on to the rails. My dad drives a eight wheeler lorry on a short distance trunk flow (about 5 miles) from a mine in Aberpergwm to Tower colliery washery where it is then transported to Aberthaw Power station by rail, but they might extend the railway line to the mine in Aberpergwn, so in that case the lorries won't be needed.
When to use rail freight: when the load exceeds 400 tons; when the run is over 4 miles; where there is a railway; or, where, it is possible to build a railway.
Build rail by the roadside to show off railfreight speed, low CO2 emitions, low fuel consumption and reliability and when the road is grid-locked all the drivers in cars, vans and lorries will look at the train and think "that's the way forward, railfreight", then there would be fewer accidents, less work needed on the road and fewer traffic jams.
Hope you agree, but if you don't, you really do need start agreeing with me and many others who agree with me.
Should lorries pay nothing
The road haulage companies encourage food miles - they enable cauliflours to be transported from Cornwall to London and then returned to Cornwall for consumption there - how much better for them to be consumed in Cornwall. It also allows sandwiches to be made in Nottingham and then delivered to every M & S in the land - what absolute madness that is. There is the very serious issue of climate change - anyone that denies this is either stupid or has a vested interest in 'business as usual'. Also, oil is going to run out - it's a fact - like it or not. We should be supporting our local economies - obviously we will have to import some things but then can come on the trains. We need to conserve land for growing food and for our threatened wildlife - not covering it with concrete/tarmac and then building service areas where you can treat yourself to a tea and a sandwich and not get change from a fiver.
Should lorries pay nothing
Well, Definitly not, infact they should pay more, call me insane if u want but the lorries do more damage to the road's than cars, and the car drivers realy are paying the price. The road industry needs to keep paying taxes so that railfreight can be competative, If we want a nice clean planet then Railfreight is the way forward, not road transport, Railfreight needs to get a lottle cheaper to become even more competative, so I hope u agree with me. If anything railfreight should pay hardly anything, but in doing so either the passenger train tickets will get more expensive, or the railinfranstructure will go into dis-repair, but even so the railways are not that expensive compared to road transport.
Unpleasant truths
Whether freight goes by rail or road should not, in my view, be the main concern but the reduction of damage to the environment caused by the method of transport itself. In the word environment, I include not just climate change but health, noise, road danger, resource depletion, end-of-life pollution etc. At present, neither road nor rail pay the true cost of their damage to the environment. As these costs become factored into the price we pay to move freight by road or rail then the balance will change but I doubt if much traffic will move from road to rail unless there is a massive increase in rail construction or rapid reduction in consumerism.
Oil running out
It is very unlikely that oil will ever run out but you are correct in saying that we should be careful with its use.
So, Oil is Forever!?
I get the impression, from reading some of this thread's comments, that unsustainable Development - particularly from a motorist's point of view - is inevitable and perhaps even a necessity that we'll all just have to put up with...
Of course, the Earth itself will never actually "run out" of the physical material we call oil. But the extraction of oil by people for mass consumption purposes, will one day cease. This is because the currently-adopted economics of highly industrialised (consumption) states and societies, doesn't just boom and bust over and over, but will one day collapse in on itself.
This will either be as a result of some self-induced factor, such as economies' inability to cope with incredible changes brought about by climate change or social backlash etc, or, the mass need for oil (or any other propulsive and lubricant) will just decline as we evolve into trying and adopting new forms of community economics.
Oil WILL run out in terms of economic mass extraction - true sustainability is the guarantee of this!
What do you reckon?
Chris Aldridge
(ETA customer)
Oil Running Out
I agree, we will stop using oil, in terms of mass extraction, not because it is running out but because its use will no longer serve our survival.
Whether we will stop in time is another matter.
I might not have been clear.
Let me take your points one by one.
I did not say that lorries should pay 10,000 times what they pay currently – I was arguing against Roger King’s assertion that lorries should not pay anything. The ETA has stated many times that it prefers a road-user charge to vehicle excise duty. So we are not suggesting that lorries pay twice.
The ETA has, for many years, said that there should not be a fuel duty – so again you are attacking the national government not my arguments.
I agree with you that we should have roads that are well constructed and maintained. A road-user charge - even with lorries paying 10,000 times as much as a car (and remember I compared cars to the maximum weight lorry – many lorries would pay considerably less) would be less than the current costs of driving (excluding congestion charges). I have driven across Poland I do not think that our roads are as bad as theirs.
The ETA supports value neutral taxation. In this case vehicles are taxed according to the damage they make to the roads. In other words, we make no judgment as to whether your journey to the leisure centre is more important than my journey to the cinema. If the contents of a lorry are so important then people will be willing to pay the cost of transporting them. If not then the journey will not be made.
You make another mistake again – transport is a minimal cost to the price of most goods and services. The ETA does not support the national government’s current policy of specifically taxing the transport industry and is on record for stating (on many occasions) that this action of the government is morally, economically, environmentally and politically wrong.
I am not knocking the transport industry. All I said in this article is that I think people should pay for maintenance in proportion the costs involved – I would have hoped you would see this as fair and reasonable.
You might know that many modern lorries have active axles that reduce the damage they make in comparison to older axles of the same weight. A fair system would take this into account. If a single 44 ton vehicle made more economic sense (including the road-user charge of course) than 44 one ton vehicles then such large vehicles would survive and prosper.
The beauty of road-user charging is that vehicles from any country would pay - not just British registered vehicles. I would have thought you support that idea.
I recognize the central contribution that lorries make to the welfare of our people. I believe that transport is taxed in a bizarre and incoherent way. I am not anti lorry but the road freight industry does itself no favours when it asks for a free ride.