When my wife and I got married and moved into our first house, our first major home furnishings purchase was a huge (at the time) television: a 55-inch rear projection Sony Wega that set us back $3,000. In 2004, that was the equal to more than five mortgage payments.
It was probably one of the dumber things we could have purchased at the time but in your early 20s, and rounding corner into football season, your priorities don't always make a lot of sense.
Plasma TVs were the big thing, and cheaper, but LCD-LED was the way of the future. I was getting on this trend early and I was paying up for it.
Nearly 20 years later, they don't even make the Wega anymore and the TV I have now is not only larger, it cost about 87% less. Two decades later, TVs are cheaper and better. Heavy trucks can't say the same.
Trucks that used to cost about $100,000 now cost nearly $200,000 (or more). They're more efficient for sure, but with sticker prices practically doubled it's unlikely I would ever recoup that difference over the course of the truck's lifecycle. That's why it's long past time to do away with the Federal Excise Tax on heavy trucks.
In a letter jointly penned by the American Trucking Associations, American Truck Dealers, and Zero Emission Transportation Association (ZETA), and sent to Congressional leadership last month, the groups claim that the tax – established in 1917 to defray the costs of World War I – is impeding the deployment of cleaner, more environmentally friendly trucks by disincentivizing the purchase of new, low-emission power units.
They're right.
