Newsgroups: misc.transport.road
Subject: Re: NC not fining overweight trucks
Message-ID: <cv8391lq43gpctv4jtk0nj5rlt58umc601@...>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 05:45:05 -0400

Part two of a four day report:

http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/2436906p-8841419c.html

Earlier this month, the N.C. Senate quickly agreed to overrule state
engineers and allow heavy trucks carrying construction materials to
rumble over country and neighborhood roads not built to handle the
load. The N.C. Home Builders Association is pushing the legislation,
which would allow its members' trucks to drive fully loaded on the
fragile roads -- and avoid paying for the damage. Sen. Clark Jenkins,
the bill's sponsor, says the General Assembly should approve the
legislation as a matter of fairness.

That's because legislators have already granted similar breaks to
trucks that haul garbage, seafood, logs, sludge, Christmas trees,
crops and other materials.

Some of the breaks date to the 1980s or before. But during the past 12
years, state lawmakers voted 10 times for bills that benefit trucking
interests at the public expense. The actions include:

* Giving trucks hauling wood chips, agricultural products and
construction aggregates approval to travel on state primary and
secondary roads with total weights higher than the 80,000 pounds
allowed on interstates. Weights on interstates are controlled by
Congress.

* Cutting fines for some overweight trucks in half. Also, legislators
have not increased overweight penalties since 1981. That means, after
inflation, overweight truck fines are now 25 percent to 50 percent of
what they were in the early 1980s.

* Allowing some fully loaded trucks to travel on neighborhood streets
and back roads that highway engineers say aren't strong enough to take
the pounding.

...

Truck weight is regulated because the larger, heavier vehicles do so
much more damage than cars. One truck loaded to the interstate limit
of 80,000 pounds puts as much stress on a highway as 5,000 cars,
according to Judith Corley-Lay, an expert on pavement management at
the state Division of Highways.

Corley-Lay's estimate might be conservative. The director of the U.S.
General Accounting Office told a congressional oversight committee in
1979 that 20,000 pounds on a truck axle -- the federal limit -- does
7,550 times as much damage as the weight on one car axle.

Even so, Jenkins last year co-sponsored a bill pushed by the N.C. Dump
Truck Association that raised the maximum gross weight of trucks
hauling aggregates to 84,000 pounds, 5 percent higher than the maximum
allowed by the federal government on interstates. It also raised
maximum axle weights about 10 percent above the interstate limit.

Axle weight is controlled because trucks that weigh less than the
maximum can still do a lot of damage if they have too much weight on a
single axle or combination of axles.

The dump truck bill was approved by the Senate, 45-0, on June 28. Two
days later, Ted Brown, a lobbyist for the Dump Truck Association,
picked up the lunch tab at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar in Raleigh for
the bill's primary sponsor, Sen. John A. Garwood, a Republican from
North Wilkesboro.

...

Dan DeVane, now a deputy secretary of transportation, opposes
legislation that increases truck weights. But as a legislator in 1993,
he sponsored one bill relaxing weight limits for trucks and
co-sponsored another, just before he resigned his seat in the House
and went to work for DOT.

One of his bills cut overweight fines in half for trucks hauling
recyclable material. It let them travel fully loaded on some "posted"
roads, where most other fully loaded trucks are forbidden.

State highway engineers try to protect some secondary roads from heavy
trucks by barring those that weigh more than 13,000 pounds per axle.
Other than exceptions approved by legislators, the per-axle maximum on
all other roads in North Carolina is 20,000 pounds.

...

In 1993, DeVane was working against the wishes of highway engineers.
DeVane says he can't remember why he sponsored the bill dealing with
recyclable material or who was pushing it.

The other bill allowed trucks hauling agricultural products to
increase their gross weight to 88,000 pounds, 10 percent above the
interstate maximum, on primary and secondary roads. DeVane noted that
he had represented Hoke County, a big cotton- and soybean-farming
area.

...

The N.C. Farm Bureau Federation, a powerful grass-roots lobbying
organization whose members include most farmers in North Carolina,
threw its support behind DeVane's bill and several others that, taken
together, allowed trucks hauling farm products to carry more weight
without a special permit than anyone else.

The Division of Motor Vehicles, which was then responsible for
enforcing the overweight truck laws, opposed DeVane's bill. A DMV
spokesman warned legislators that if the bill passed, rural highways
"would be damaged and require repair more often." The farmers won,
45-0 in the Senate and 88-0 in the House.

DeVane says now that he wouldn't vote for either bill.

...

The bills giving truckers exemptions to the weight law cost taxpayers
"millions of dollars a year" in additional highway maintenance, DeVane
said.

...

Ideas for these types of bills usually get brought to legislators from
lobbyists. One is Robert W. Slocum Jr. of the N.C. Forestry
Association, which represents the logging industry.

...

Before the law was changed, loggers had a choice: Reduce weight by
hauling fewer logs or post a bond to repair roads that they damaged.

Slocum said there's no reason for timber companies to have to pay for
roads they tear up. "I think my members would say that's what we pay
taxes for," he said.

...

The most recent bills that have chipped away at the state's ability to
regulate trucks were passed in 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2002 and
2004. This year, the push comes from the N.C. Home Builders
Association, which represents about 16,000 companies associated with
the home-building industry.

...

The home builders' two lobbyists, R. Paul Wilms and Mike Carpenter,
have significant clout with lawmakers. The N.C. Center for Public
Policy Research's ranking of lobbyists' influence shows that the
organization is one of four to have two lobbyists ranked in the top
50: Carpenter at 21 and Wilms at 29.

...

He said there were complaints about the state Department of
Transportation requiring companies to post bonds to pay for repairs if
their trucks tore up the roads. Otherwise, they would have to make
more trips with smaller loads. That costs money.

"I didn't quite know if there was a fix," Wilms said. "But when I
looked at the law, there were all kinds of exemptions already."

----------------------------------------------------

That's the way these things work. Get a foot in the door by giving one
group an exemption to the truck weights, and before you know it other
groups are pointing at the exception and saying "hey, you gave it to
them, give it to us too!".

No wonder NC's back roads are tearing up so quickly.