GEORGIA’S WEIGHTY TRUCK PROBLEM

In spite of Chattanooga’s growing reputation as a logistics hub, we sympathize with our neighbors just across the line in Georgia in their concern about an increased weight limit for trucks on non-interstate highways.

A bill in the legislature of the Peach State would increase that limit from a gross weight of 80,000 pounds — which is the federal interstate highways weight limit — to 90,000 pounds.

What that means is trucks in Georgia would be taking heavier loads on state and county roads, which are less able to withstand such loads and which the states and counties then would be on the hook to repair more frequently.

With all due respect to the industries that we want to see produce and/or ship more goods, and grow and thrive, we don’t believe the cost to states and counties is worth it, especially as the cost of repairs — like everything in the current economy — skyrockets with inflation.

The bill, HB189, passed the House Transportation Committee last week but would need to pass the full House and Senate and be signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp before becoming law.

However, that looks to us like it could be a slog since it is opposed by Kemp’s Department of Transportation and by several groups representing county leadership.

Several Georgia transportation representatives detailed what would have to happen immediately if the bill passed, including the weight-limiting of about 1,400 bridges. That, in turn, would mean longer commutes for truckers, more gasoline used, more truck exhaust spilling into the air, longer stopping distances, greater wear and tear on truck safety components, and, eventually, more ravaging of state and county highways.

And don’t you know motorists are looking forward to what occurred in pre-interstate highway days when you had to follow tractor-trailer trucks on twisting, turning roads and then, on straightaways, take life into your hands as you attempted to pass them.

Last year, two bills were introduced in the Georgia legislature to raise the weight limit for log trucks. Neither passed. We hope that will be the case for the bill about the general weight limit increase.

“Given that counties maintain over 75% of the roads in the state,” Dade County Commissioner Robert Goff wrote in an op-ed on this page last week, “this legislation would hit rural counties particularly hard because they have to cover just as much geography but with a smaller tax base than more densely populated counties. This places an unfunded mandate on local taxpayers, requiring counties to raise taxes or divert money from other important programs.”

Arguments by the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Steve Meeks, R-Screven, about truck driver shortages, high fuel prices, spreading the effects of heavier trucks throughout the year and improved bridge construction seem unconvincing to us.

Longer commutes won’t mean less fuel used or help driver shortages, and spreading the effects of heavier trucks throughout the year doesn’t mean any less wear on roads.

Truck weight limits on non-interstate highways vary from state to state, and only a logistics expert is able to make sense of all the exceptions for axles, special permits and bridge formulas.

Some states increase the weight limits on such highways, and some decrease them.

Alabama, Georgia’s neighbor to the west, for instance, has an 84,000-pound weight limit on non-interstate highways, while its neighbor to the east, South Carolina, has a 73,280-pound weight limit for such highways.

Tennessee’s weight limit for non-interstate highways is 80,000 pounds.

A 2018 article on the website of FreightWaves, a Chattanoogabased firm which calls itself “the world’s leading supply chain intelligence platform,” looked at the debate over increasing weight limits for trucks.

“The bad news is that non-Interstate highways are neither as safe nor as well constructed as Interstates, thus it really is less safe,” the article reads. “Most states could attest to this. The rural parts of the U.S. are often hit the hardest [by weight increases].”

It cites a Roads & Bridge interview with a senior research engineer with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, who said that pavement degradation goes up as truck weight limits increase but not in a linear fashion. Indeed, he said, it’s much worse. A 5% weight increase from 80,000 pounds, for example, increases road degradation by about 25%.

The FreightWaves article also cites Judith Corley-Lay, the chief pavement management engineer for North Carolina’s transportation department, who conducted a study for that state on the cost of overweight trucks.

“If you have to treat a road in five years instead of eight, or in eight years instead of 12, there’s a real cost impact,” she said.

We hope Georgia’s legislators do their homework and conclude that, given the downsides of a 12.5% weight increase on non-interstate roads, making such a change would be detrimental to people, infrastructure and, in turn, the state economy as a whole.