I guess at this point you got me in a corner. I just didnt realize or take the time to really put the numbers together. I guess it does cost a ridiculous amount of money to keep the highways maintained properly. Like I always told my kids growing up when they ask why we must pay so many taxes. My answer handed down from my dad and he is 70 now is TAXES ARE THE PRICE WE PAY TO LIVE IN A CIVILIZED SOCIETY. maybe now i will look at our nations highways a little more differently. I should have been able to figure it out myself, I went to mexico 2 years ago and spent a week at cancun and went to see the ruins and all their roads are terrible when you get off the paridise strip. rigs and buses run on two lane main roads that look like our roads 100 years ago. nuff said
So Dave what can we do to our diesels me a new guy at this to try to save fuel milage. Anything is a help thanks Bob
Last edited by boots6868 : 04-19-2008 at 03:25 PM.
Reason: Forgot to mention
Small things like air filter clean, fuel filter clean help a little.
Then proper tire inflation and front end alignment.
If the injectors and IP have a lot of miles on them, the replacement cost may pay for it's self in less than a year.
Fuel system cleaners also help.
But the biggie on a diesel is driving style.
My last fuel fill up was 51.711 gallons, 228.22 dollars.
I am just glad I still had that last 15 gallons in the tanks, or I was looking at almost a 300 dollar fill up.
Over that entire time I was burning that fuel, I made a constant effort to drive slower, take off slower and keep the RPM's down below 2500, or more when possible and idle as little as possible.
The difference was 3.13 MPG better mileage.
As for everything I have said above, I don't like taxes any more than anyone else.
But I did spend 13 years as an over the road driver.
And I am now in both construction and snow removal during the winter.
At our local mall the trucks get 55 dollars an hour, 10 trucks plow for about 10 hours with a 4" snowfall.
So 4" of snow costs the mall 5500 dollars to plow the parking lot.
That lot is tiny compared to the amount of area the WV DOT plows just to clear the 549 miles of interstates in WV.
And I also listen to the news, things like the Minneapolis bridge collapse have to be addressed.
Cutting waste in government, I am all for.
Cutting money going into the roads, is a bad idea that will cost people their lives.
Notice we have 6343 bridges in WV and 32% of them (2029 bridges) are over 100 feet high.
I don't want my son or wife to die when one of them collapse while they are driving across it.
And I can safely say that all highway use tax dollars do go to road maintenance and construction projects as well as a lot of tax dollars from other sources.
Looking at Pennsylvania it looks like the lottery was a source for 141,592,000 dollars toward transportation on top of the use tax on 2007 along with money from the general account IE income, property and sales tax to list a couple.
When you start looking at the big picture, you have to wonder how they do what they do for the amount of money they have.
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86 F250 HD 6.9 IDI ATS turbo "not exactly" stock 4x4 T19 BW1345 3.55LS both ends D60 front, 10.25" Sterling rear, ram air, dual stacks.
Hey Guys-You peaked my interest with this one! First, when using used motor oil as fuel, my injector rebuilder, Robert Ackerman-Roberts diesel, Highland wi, Says DONT DO IT! But, if you are going to do it, with the tight tolerances on todays electronic unit injectors, even your diesel fuel should be filtered to at least 5 microns if not more. Older mechanical injectors had wider tolerances, and could pass some dirt with no problem ( 100's of an inch) However these new injectors are fit in 1000's, and as with detroit and caterpillar, 1 millionth of an inch! Now thats close! Any particals over 5 microns will act as sand paper and quickly destroy these injectors. Is the trade off worth it? if you can filter the oil and keep it clean, I think so. If not, NO!
Next- I own a small trucking co with my dad and brother. We run 4 over the road trucks and 2 quad axle milk trucks. One point of interest on fuel taxes~ever notice some states are considerably lower than others? The reason for this is simple. Their state constitution says that any monies collected as road tax can only be used for the roads. Missouri, Oklahoma, Virginia, are some examples. Other states can dip into the road taxes for other purposes when they feel the need, and then raise the tax with the excuse that the roads are suffering and they dont have the money to fix them! Check this out at OOIDA (owner operator independent driver association)
In Wisconsin this year, the Governor was finally forced to add this stipulation to our constitution in order to get some other bills passed. So, when they (politicians) tell you all the road taxes are going for the roads, you can tell them otherwise. Illinois is a good example of this- Illinois regularly takes millions from the highway trust fund and diverts it to the chicago school district. This too, can be verified in any number of publications. Dan Rostenkowsky, a politician from Ill, is currently serving a jail sentence for mis directing highway funds! Anyway, Just my 2 cents worth!
I am not sure if corrupt is the right word, I am sure it is for part of the politicians.
Wasteful describes another bunch of them.
Is the wasteful spending deliberate?
I don't think it is, see why below.
I also know, that may people have no idea how much work and money goes into a highway and keeping it in good condition.
In this modern world, people only know what they do for a living or have an interest in.
When I was working as an electrician I had a lawyer call me about a light that did not work, yes he changed the bulb and it still did not work.
So I went over, the bulb was loose.
Screwed it in and the light was fine.
I had to laugh even though I shouldn't have when I told him the bulb needs to be tight when you change the bulb for it to work.
He knew the law, I knew electricity.
Now the sad part is this, if he ran for office, he would be funding road improvements and maintenance with legislation.
What do you think he may know about road repairs or construction?
My guess is he would know just about as much as he does about electricity, which was evident that he knew nothing at all about it.
How can you possibly supervise something you know absolutely nothing about?
So you do what the government is good at, throw money at it till it either is fixed or completely broken and you just scrap it and buy a new one.
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86 F250 HD 6.9 IDI ATS turbo "not exactly" stock 4x4 T19 BW1345 3.55LS both ends D60 front, 10.25" Sterling rear, ram air, dual stacks.
LOL-Ah what a wonderful government we have! All kinds of answers but they dont know the questions! I have the same problem in the trucking industry~lawmakers that think they can tell me how to drive this '04 Kenworth, but given the keys, probably couldnt move it in the driveway! But, hey, We are all free right? Right? Or that is what they would like us to believe! Good chat guys-love it! We should do it in the chat room sometime!
Well said , well said what else is there to say. Dave you make great points and we can only hope that someday voices like yours and ours will be heard in the halls of congress but I don't think that day is coming soon. And for the record I enjoy getting off topic with guys that are willing to do the research to see exactly what is going on before adding there 2 cents. The highway use tax is a burden but it is a neccessary burden.
I agree totally! It is a necessary burden. I just wish the politicians would stop thinking that the common man doesnt know what they are up to. Yes we need it, but THEY dont need to abuse it. But, that is another topic for another day!
I can't really coment on Illinois, there web site does not break thigs down like WV and Pa do.
What I can find though is that Illinois took in 1,375,983,192 dollars in motor fuel taxes in 2006.
I can also find that Illinois has 140,131 miles of roads and 26,548 bridges.
So Illinois has over 4 times as much roads and almost 4 times as many bridges.
Something sounds wrong with the fact that WV spent 400 million more on mainenance than Illinois took in on fuel tax, and then had money diverted away from the highway fund to schools since they have 4 times more road to take care of.
I say that as I am reading about the 640 million for the new bridge at St Louis, most of which is paid for by Illinois.
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86 F250 HD 6.9 IDI ATS turbo "not exactly" stock 4x4 T19 BW1345 3.55LS both ends D60 front, 10.25" Sterling rear, ram air, dual stacks.
i wouldnt be complaining about the fuel taxs, i would complain about o.p.e.c. and the record high profit margins of BIG oil. oil barons in saudi arabia driving around multi million dollar yachts with a 100 concubines all paid for by honest hard working people like you and me!! the real greed is in the hands of the producers of the oil.
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1987 f-250 4x4 6.9 hypermax turbo 4spd.
1985 f-350 drw 6.9 4spd. work in progress
Interesting read. Turns out the county that I live in just proposed a new fuel tax increase in the neighborhood of an additional 10 cents/gal. Our local paper reported that current funds are being misallocated thanks to some rather vague legislation and now we're expected to absorb the impact. It makes me sick personally. The roads around my house are horribly deteriorated and I can't get the county to so much as come out and patch a pothole but now they have their handout. California needs to get it's head out of it's rear IMO. This state takes in more money than any other but they have no idea how to manage it.
When I first started pulling loads into Nevada the other truckers told me that I'd know when I'd hit the state line by the road feel. They said that as soon as you crossed over it would go from that riding on gravel sensation to that of a freshly paved highway. Sure enough, it held true. Kudos to Nevada for at least getting that much right. I personally am not in favor of helping to line the pockets of anymore grossly overpaid fat cats.
Breech,
You're one of the Californians we NEED to come up here to Oregon. Then send some BACK that are up here screwing up our state even more than it already was. They come up here (and Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming) to "escape" California's draconian laws and then turn our states into the California they left.
A few notes about Illinois-the toll roads are paid for by tolls and coincidentally the most expensive to maintain. The rest have just been totally neglected. For the money they pull in, the roads should be excellent
Vehicle registration fees here also go into the DOT budget.
If WV only had registration fees to draw from we would never get the first pot hole repaired.
Here are some facts about WV roads.
37,370 miles of public roads
34,610 miles of state highway
88 miles of the West Virginia Turnpike
549 miles of Interstate highway (out of the nation’s 46,068)
1,736 miles of the National Highway System (out of the nation's 158,920)
6,343 bridges, of which 32 percent are more than 100 feet in length
2 national and 8 state scenic byways
Over 37,000 miles of highway to maintain, and WV is a rather small state.
The Department of transportation employs 5,000 people here in round numbers.
Now go back up and look at 3 million dollars worth of blacktop to pave 50 miles of road at last years prices.
From there look at 37,370 miles of roads, so it would take 747 times 3 million dollars to buy enough blacktop to pave every road in WV with 1" of blacktop.
2,242,200,000 dollars.
And that is just buying the blacktop, not getting it hauled out and installed on the roads.
I am not saying there is not waste, but I am saying unless you stop and take a hard look at numbers you will not see that taking care of the highways takes a huge pile of money every year.
Also notice at the top, all numbers are in thousands, so multiply every number in the chart by 1000.
So it looks like the 2007 highway maintence budget was 1,788,277,000 dollars.
And it also looks like the road construction budget was 1,303,383,000 dollars.
Here's one to think about Dave.
Are you familiar with the general rule of thumb that says to build something you can expect the labor to be 1-1.5 times the material cost? So you take the materials cost and multiply it by 2-2.5 to come up with the total cost for materials and labor? Let's apply that to your numbers.
2.25 billion for the asphault x 2.5 (high end estimating on the labor here) = 5.65 billion
The state's maintenance and construction budget is right at 3.09 billion for 2007. That means their budget was about 55% of what it would take to repave every mile of road in the state 1" deep. You recon they did construction or repair work equivalent to repaving 55% of the roads in WV last year? Somehow I'm kinda doubting it...
See, I'm not against paying the neccessry amount of taxes to construct and maintain the roads. What chaps my hide is the amount of money that they waste after queezing it out of hard working folks like you and me. For example:
In the 10 years between 1990 and 2000, the state of Washington constructed a total of 47 miles of new road - during a time when our population increased by nearly 50% and our traffic congestion problem in Seattle grew to be one of the worst in the nation. If they weren't using it to build new roads where the heck did those billions of dollars in taxes collected over those 10 years go? Certainly not into repairs because the roads deteriorated over that period.
And when they decide to widen a freeway by adding a lane in each direction, do they rebuild the overpasses wide enough to accomodate TWO additional lanes in each direction - to allow for future growth? Heck no! They only widen them enough to accomodate the ONE additional lane each way that they are adding right now - so that they have to tear them all down and rebuild them again in a few years when they need to widen the road again.
And do they grind up any of the MILLIONS of old tire carcasses lying piled around creating an eyesore so they can add 10% rubber to the asphault and make the new paving last 2-3 times longer like they do in Europe? NOPE, they leave the old tires lying around and taking up space in the landfills and continue to repave the roads every 5-10 years - instead of only having to do it every 10-20 years like they would if they recycled the old tires into the asphault.
Like I said, I'm willing to pay the taxes it takes to maintain the roads, but the way our state government mis-appropriates and wastes the money - instead of using it efficiently and effectively to build and maintain roads - makes me want to minimize and reduce the amount of MY money that they get their hands on!
