The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

I hate big utes amaa, but I doubt they do significantly more dame to road paving.

Curb weight for the full spec RAM 1500 is maybe twice the weight of an ordinary sedan, so the damage will be roughly 16 times.

Of course some of these are actually being used to move heavy goods. But most of them are being used to move a small number of people, often precisely 1, a task that can be done admirably by a mid-sized sedan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

From TATE:

“A 1988 report by the Australian Road Research Board stated that the rule is a good approximation for rutting damage, but an exponent of 2 (rather than 4) is more appropriate to estimate fatigue cracking.

A 2017 report commissioned by the New Zealand Transport Agency found a wide variation in the best-fitting exponents for a power law on 4T axle loads vs 6T axle loads, depending on the current condition and type of the roading. As a very rough summary of its highly detailed findings: A 9th-power law is most predictive when the road is barely able to withstand the 6T load; and the per-crossing damage is roughly linear to axle-weight when the pavement is able to withstand much higher loads than 6T per axle.”

so:
1) It’s not that simple.
2) It’s the top end axle loads (i.e. heavy trucks) that do the damage, and the difference between mid-range and bottom of the range is not that much.

3/ a 2nd power law still means it is a x4 difference.
4/ there are hundreds of thousands of heavy trucks in Australia. There are fkn millions of 2 to 3 tonne utes being utilised as family cars.
5/ At this stage the use of heavy trucks to move goods is a necessity. The selection of a 2.5 tonne ute to be used as a family car is almost always a needless extravagance.