> In the US weight restrictions are even lower than in Europe in many states.

Given that road wear grows to the fourth power (!) with vehicle weight, I hope you guys feel well with the fact that your tax dollar subsidizes those ultra heavy trucks.

Seems reasonable given, you know, they are also delivering our food, fuel and basically anything else you need or want. They also pay a considerable amount of road tax and taxes on fuel which would make most people in the US plot a coup.

Ah, yes, because trains clearly could not do this and never did in the past. There is no alternative.

Trains have never delivered to individual retail stores, half finished housing estates or petrol stations. Perhaps reserve your sarcasm for when you aren't saying something stupid.

Yes, because none of those things existed before the automobile.

I'm not even sure what you are trying to say. Perhaps try having a grown up discussion rather than trying to win internet points via your superior sarcastic smack downs.

Retail stores certainly existed before the automobile. People walked, biked or used horses to get to them. Horse and cart were used to deliver things to them.

Even in living memory getting a special order item required 4-6 weeks for shipping, and that was if you paid extra!

This is not totally true. It was very common to have markets right next or even under train stations. It was also common for trains to do milk delivery with stores close to rail stations. You also had trains going threw cities on street levels to unload.

But this isn't really the right debate. Sure you need some last mile in many cases, but that's also often true with large trucks.

The simple fact is a far, far, far larger amount of transport could be handled by train if society put the right insensitive in place, rather then the completely backwards intensives that exist now.

In Switzerland its quite common for example to have even fresh food transported by train, the largest retailer works closely with the rail company and delivers to a number of regional depots where smaller (sometimes small or medium) trucks then take it to individual stores. We don't have these Wallmarkt supper stores that Americans (unfortunately for them prefer).

Its very common that larger stores, like Ikea actually are directly connected by the train network.

There could actually also be a lot more done to do cargo delivery by tram. This has started in a number of European cities. In Zürich the Cargo tram is currently mostly used for extraction of waste (like e-waste), not yet delivery, but it has potential.

I do, because I like stores being stocked and deliveries arriving. And so do a supermajority of my fellow citizens.

Ah and you think in Europe where we have less heavy trucks our stocks and goods don't arrive?

Why haven't you told me earlier? I wouldn't have had to bother to walk to the supermarket across the street.

In Europe the standard gross weight for a truck is 44t (97,000lbs).

By contrast on American interstates the standard is 80,000lbs.

Your sarcasm is unwarranted and just makes you look stupid when you are completely wrong.

> fourth power (!) with vehicle weight

Divided by tire. That's why heavy trucks have so many of them.

Most countries regulate the weight by tire, so that this actually doesn't change between trucks.

Regulated by tire or by axle? In the US, it’s generally the latter.

Yes, by writing it by axle on the regulation is common. There is also a requirement for a minimum number of operating tires in an axle. (I don't keep close track of this, but I don't think it's always 2.) And requirements for tire pressure (that changes how much damage the truck causes too).

On practice the impact of the truck is determined by law independently of the weight (on those superficial models, but there is also some depth where the regulation starts to fail).

>Given that road wear grows to the fourth power

Where can we find more on this? I'm not doubting, but I can't think of why this is. It's pretty rare to find much in the physical world that uses the 4th power (Hagen–Poiseuille equation relating fluid pressure differential in a pipe - or artery - is one of the few that comes to mind)

I don't remember where but this is pretty common knowlage in urban design and transport engineering. Any textbook on road engineering should have that stuff.

From what I could find, the road damage 4th power relationship is empirically derived (in contrast to something like Hagen–Poiseuille) and the relationship is disputed by experts.

Maybe the 4th power is relationship is not mathematically proven but its certainty really fucking bad in a practical sense.

There already are battery electric trucks capable of carrying hundreds of tonnes of rocks. Australia actually has road trains north of 200 tonnes that are battery electric. The battery weight is mostly not an issue.

Weight savings are nice of course. But so is not burning diesel by the hundreds of gallons. The trade off is between a few percent extra weight or lots of dollars spent on fuel.