While trucking companies that deliver goods pay only a portion of high

The following appeared as part of an editorial in an industry newsletter.
“While trucking companies that deliver goods pay only a portion of highway maintenance costs and no property tax on the highways they use, railways spend billions per year maintaining and upgrading their facilities. The government should lower the railroad companies’ property taxes, since sending goods by rail is clearly a more appropriate mode of ground transportation than highway shipping. For one thing, trains consume only a third of the fuel a truck would use to carry the same load, making them a more cost-effective and environmentally sound mode of transport. Furthermore, since rail lines already exist, increases in rail traffic would not require building new lines at the expense of taxpaying citizens.”



The argument claims that the government should lower the railroad companies’ since sending goods by rail is a more appropriate way of ground transportation than highway shipping. To support this claim the argument has several reasons: railways spend billions per year for maintaining and upgrading their facilities while trucks pay only a portion of highway maintenance and no property tax on the use of highways, trains consume only a third of the fuel a truck would use to carry the same load making it more cost-effective and environmentally sound mode of transport and increases in rail traffic would not require building new lines since rail lines already exist. Stated in this way the argument manipulates the facts and conveys a distorted view of the situation. The conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is weak and has several flaws.


First, the argument readily assumes that railroad companies spend much more money on maintenance of their facilities that the trucking companies do for highway maintenance. The argument is a stretch since this claim in not sufficiently substantiated by the evidence. For example, it is possible that trucking companies pay much more for the maintenance of the highways than the railroad companies for the maintenance of the railroad. Clearly, the argument is unconvincing and need to be strengthened. The argument could have been much clearer if it showed the evidence that the railroad companies spend much more money on maintenance than the trucking companies do.


Second, the argument states that trucks use three times more fuel that trains do. This is again very weak and unsupported claim as the argument relies on assumption for which there is no any evidence. To illustrate, new types of trucks are much more fuel efficient that the old ones and it is possible that trucks use the same, if not, the smaller amount of fuel per mile. If the argument had provided the evidence that trucks actually use much more fuel compared to trains then the argument would have been a lot more convincing.


Finally, do railroad companies spend more money on maintenance? Do trains use smaller amount of fuel for transportation that trucks? Without convincing answers to these question, one is left with the impression that the claim is more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.


In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all the relevant facts such as the exact amount of money that the railroad companies spends for maintenance compared to trucking companies and which type of transportation is more fuel efficient. Without this information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.