Heavier Mail Trucks are a Policy Pothole

Photo by Josiah Farrow on Unsplash

America’s mail carrier is in dire fiscal straits and has lost nearly $20 billion over the past two years. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has repeatedly claimed it does not receive tax dollars to fund its operations. Never mind that the USPS received $10 billion from Congress to offset pandemic-related losses. Or, the $3 billion given to the USPS by Congress to purchase electric trucks. Or, the more than $3 billion per year in subsidies the agency rakes in through tax gimmicks and preferential loans.

Then, there are the indirect costs foisted on taxpayers. USPS “middle mile” transportation—the long-distance movement of mail between processing centers and network hubs—is handled primarily by large commercial tractor-trailers. As a recent coalition letter consisting of 27 groups led by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance and the National Consumers League made clear, large trucks inflict significant wear-and-tear on America’s roads and cost taxpayers a pretty penny. As lawmakers prepare to mark up the surface transportation reauthorization bill, they should keep these costs in mind and steer clear of proposals allowing heavier trucks on the road.

For decades, Congress has wisely opted to maintain the maximum cap of 80,000 pounds in Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) on federal interstates. Despite real risks to infrastructure integrity and driver safety, some groups and lawmakers have proposed allowing even heavier trucks on the road.

This would not end well for taxpayers or drivers. Purdue engineering scholar Maria Alicia Chung Li concludes, “Overweight truck operations cause significant damage to highway infrastructure that consequently reduces the service life of pavement and bridges. Overweight trucks cause much greater damage to pavement surfaces than the damage expected from legal weight trucks.” Among the more striking studies surveyed by Li was a Texas analysis estimating “that the damage caused by overweight truck traffic ... is approximately 20.6 percent greater than the damage caused by the design traffic.” The same study found that “the additional damage caused by overweight trucks reduces pavement service life by 50 percent.”

These results are not surprising: putting too much pressure on even the most durable materials can wear the materials out in short order. A 2009 analysis by researchers at the University of Waterloo “showed that concrete bridge damage is exacerbated when they experience sustained OW [overweight] truck operations because such vehicle loads accelerate the incidence and severity of fatigue cracking, leading to exposure of reinforcements to moisture and subsequent corrosion and cover concrete spalling.”

It isn’t even clear that allowing heavier trucks with more cargo on the road would benefit large movers of products such as the USPS. As a December report from AMB Logistics notes, one of the agency’s “largest highway contractors, 10 Roads Express, is shutting down after nearly 50 years on the road. With more than 2,400 trucks and over 2,600 drivers being phased out by early 2026, this is the biggest trucking shutdown since Yellow and a loud warning about concentration risk, postal network redesign, and the fragility of U.S. mail logistics.” If the USPS’ large highway contractors’ business models are faltering—and a major source of USPS cost growth—perhaps it’s time to reassess the agency’s insistence on shifting away from air cargo and toward ground transportation.

Clearly, something isn’t working, and taxpayers and consumers are paying the price. The answer is not for policymakers to double down on heavy trucks and unsustainable infrastructure policies. Congress must hold the line on the 80,000-pound GVW limit and keep the USPS accountable.