Oil and the economy

Yes.

Or even get more energy from North America, including oil.

 

What do you think these trucks are hauling?

They're delivering consumer goods. And tax directed at the trucking industry will be passed on to consumers, and will hit the poor the hardest.

 

In the farm belt at lot of those trucks are carrying the raw materials to produce environmentally friendly ethanol and in turn carrying
the finished product to oil refineries to be blended with gasoline. I would hate to see these trucks taxed more. Maybe there would be a
tax credit for materials deemed environmentally friendly. In foods you could also look at what's healthy and what's not. For example
trucks hauling red meat should pay more than trucks hauling broccoli.

 

Yep. These kinds of taxes invariably get passed on to the consumer, which is why I'm not a big fan of the "stick" approach of taxation. I do, however, think it's generally a good idea to provide direct incentives, like rebates and tax credits, to shift consumer behavior. Of course, some people may consider that "picking winners and losers."

 

When I owned a diesel BMW, I got a $900 tax rebate to offset the diesel tax.

 

Was this some sort of flat rate, or did you have to somehow show how much you had paid?

 

It's all backwards here. In Europe, diesel is much cheaper than gasoline. More people drive diesel automobiles because they get better mileage. And yet, European nations manage to get by with diesel big rigs on their roads.

 

Oh, would someone think of the waitresses in central Pennsylvania!

As noted pages back, trucking company J.B. Hunt had $1.6 billion in revenues last year and paid around $18 million in diesel fuel taxes.

That's a tiny amount of money given that the entire industry rests on the government built and maintained roadways that are caused immense amounts of damage by 80,000 pound trucks, even a smallish increase in diesel taxes would raise millions upon millions and, sure, that might mean consumers pay a little more and it might mean that instead of having $110 million in profit, J.B. Hunt only has $102 million in profit but so what.

Bridges and roads are crumbling right now and it is largely the trucking industry's fault. They should be the ones paying for it.

Also, two things. Europe makes it work because it is much more compact and they have a much better rail system to transport both goods and people. Second, you have off-road diesel for farm equipment and on-road diesel for trucks and cars. So you can keep the taxes the same for off-read and higher for on-road.

 

I don't know why you think the gross revenue of a trucking company has any relevance.

If the tax is applied to all trucking, the cost goes up for all trucking. That cost will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices. And, while it might only be a "little more", it would hit the poor the hardest, as a little is a large percentage of their money.

As for roads and bridges that are crumbling, is this because of a lack of revenue?

Also, we're never going to reinvent our society to be more like Europe. We're a big country. Even the traditional hub an spoke network of public transportation is becoming less and less useful as more people have jobs that do not require them to commute into the large, central city.

 

Jay, do you think truckers are getting rich?

 

It is pretty clear that the trucking companies are.

On a system built and maintained by government that can't get anything done.

 

And, how would raising taxes on diesel fuel change how much money trucking companies make?

Even in times of high fuel prices, companies routinely added fuel surcharges to their bills. You don't think higher costs would be passed along to the customer (public).

Hell, I charge a fuel charge based on the miles I travel. If prices go up, the charge goes up. It's that simple.

As for the government building roads, that's a funny one. Do you think the guy building the road work for the DOT? They're employees of a private company who won a government contract.