Word: highway
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When Congress last December passed the 5?-per-gal. increase in the gasoline tax, designed to patch the nation's pothole-pocked highway system, it made a deal with the trucking industry. In addition to having to pay more at the pump beginning April 1, truckers found their highway-use taxes and registration fees raised, as of July 1984, from $240 a year to $1,600 for the largest rigs. As a palliative, Congress created rules to permit tandem-trailer trucks, some of them 40 tons in weight when loaded, unprecedented access to the interstate highway system and most...
...response from the states varied from cooperation to defiance. Some opened all their primary roads, others agreed to give the big rigs right-of-way over 50% or more of these highways. But the Federal Government was not taking no for an answer; when some states balked, the Department of Transportation as an interim measure added about 38,000 miles of road to the 101,000 miles the states had stipulated. If the states still refuse to comply, they could lose their federal highway funds...
...jackknife than smaller trucks. Truck drivers assert, however, that tandem trailers, known in the industry as "double bottoms," are safer than smaller rigs because they have extra axles and better weight distribution. But there is little question that the larger rigs will batter the nation's interstate highway system, initiated in 1956 for trucks far less hefty than today...
...move benefited exactly one U.S. firm: Milwaukee's Harley-Davidson Motor Co. Harley, perhaps best known for its big-engine "hogs," is the sole remaining U.S. manufacturer of the two-wheeled machines that have long been synonymous with American rebelliousness, restless individualism and the freedom of the endless highway...
...federal tax increase of five cents per gallon, which also went into effect last Friday, was approved by President Reagan in January in order to fund & national highway renewal project...