As Congress works toward creating the next highway bill, there will certainly be discussion of whether truckers pay their fair share into the federal Highway Trust Fund.
According to data from the OOIDA Foundation, truck drivers pay nearly 20 times more per mile than the average car owner.
“It appears our members are easily covering any kind of damage and more in what they are contributing to highway maintenance,” Charles Sperry, research analyst for the OOIDA Foundation, told Land Line Now.
The average passenger vehicle contributes about 2.1 cents per mile in combined federal and state fuel taxes, according to the Tax Foundation. Meanwhile, the average heavy-duty truck pays 4.1 cents per mile in federal fuel taxes.
Although that amount is nearly double what passenger vehicles pay, it’s only a fraction of the total amount that truckers pay in federal taxes.
Using figures from members of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, truckers pay an annual average of $11,651 in federal fuel taxes, $27,560 for federal excise taxes on the tires, trailer and truck and $2,921 for the heavy vehicle use tax, registration and other fees.
In all, the average OOIDA member contributes $42,132 per year into the Highway Trust Fund, while the average passenger vehicle driver contributes anywhere from $137 to $296 per year. Considering that OOIDA members average a little more than 109,000 miles per year, they contribute 38.6 cents per mile.
It’s also worth mentioning that these figures don’t include the state fuel taxes that truckers pay, as many of those funds are used for state projects not related to transportation.
“It’s a significantly higher rate, obviously,” Sperry said. “You might even say that there’s a good case to be made that in some ways, truckers are subsidizing the use of passenger vehicles on the road.”
‘Truckers have paid enough’
At least one member of Congress is well aware of how much truckers contribute to the Highway Trust Fund, which is the main funding source for highway and bridge projects.
Rep. Mike Collins, who owns a trucking company, said during a House subcommittee hearing in April that truckers already pay their fair share. Essentially, charging truckers more is not the best way to generate more revenue for the Highway Trust Fund.
“I just want to take a few minutes and speak from the perspective of a trucker because I’m in the trucking business … The first thing I want to start out with is just a list of taxes we pay in the trucking industry,” the Republican from Georgia said.
“First of all, we pay for IRP tags, which is supposed to be the International Registration Plan for every truck and every tag every year. Then we’ve got (Federal Excise Tax) taxes on new purchases, which is based on the purchase price. When I bought my first truck in the early ’90s that was fully loaded and decked out, it was $81,000. Now, it’s pushing over $200,000 per truck. Trailers are the same way.
“We pay FET tax on every tire we buy – and by the way, there are 18 tires on an 18-wheeler, and we use a lot of them. We pay fuel tax based on fuel mileage in every state across this country no matter whether you buy fuel in that state, and the tax rate is based on the tax rate for that state. We also pay the federal Highway Use Tax, which has gone up over years. We used to pay it based on how many trucks you had over the past year. Now you pay it up front on how many trucks you have today in one lump sum. There is no refund if you wreck or sell the truck … That’s what we have to pay to stay on the road.” LL
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