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A comment on What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?. Parent comment

Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by josephcsible on Friday December 30, 2022 @04:35PM (#34190388)
But not nearly higher enough. Driving on roads damages them in proportion to the fourth power of per-axle weight, which is about 17,000lbs for a fully loaded semi and 2,000lbs for a car. To put that in perspective, if the toll for the car were $0.25, it'd have to be over $1,300 for the truck for it to be fair in that sense.
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Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by nemo44x on Friday December 30, 2022 @05:46PM (#34191030)
It will just raise shipping costs and therefore raise the cost of goods. By charging trucks more it creates a regressive tax effectively. By subsidizing them this is a way we utilize socialism to ensure lower wage people have access.
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Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by WalterBright on Friday December 30, 2022 @08:01PM (#34192099)
That's why move the freight by rail.
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Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by UncleEntity on Friday December 30, 2022 @10:22PM (#34193184)
They move a bunch of freight by rail, nobody wants to pay someone a bunch of money to drive it when they can just throw it on a train.

And trains are relatively time inefficient so people in Maine couldn’t have their fresh Californian strawberries a couple days after they are plucked out of the field.

Maybe people don’t deserve to have fresh produce but that’s another discussion altogether.

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Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by WalterBright on Friday December 30, 2022 @11:49PM (#34193683)
Did you know that one of the very first uses of the first transcontinental railroad was shipping fresh California produce back east? And this was a century and a half ago.
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Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by UncleEntity on Saturday December 31, 2022 @01:11AM (#34194116)
They still do…depends on the shelf life of whatever they’re shipping.
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Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by WalterBright on Saturday December 31, 2022 @01:48AM (#34194294)
They used ice in the old days. Strawberries will last up to 6 days if you refrigerate them coming home from the store, I don't know how long that is since they were picked.

A lot of fresh produce comes in by jet.

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Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by UncleEntity on Saturday December 31, 2022 @02:07AM (#34194344)
It’s quite common for me to show up at a shipper in the morning and whatever I’m picking up is still in the field. I’ve even had stuff loaded straight into the trailer out of the field a few times.
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Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by sfpotter on Saturday December 31, 2022 @12:40PM (#34198671)
Uh, who doesn't deserve to have fresh produce??
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Re:What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle? by Thorrez on Friday December 30, 2022 @10:10PM (#34193117)
Well the tax increase on trucks can be accompanied by some other tax decrease that mostly affects poorer people, such as a sales tax decrease or an income tax rate decrease in the lowest bracket.
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