They were gifted the land when the land was close to worthless because the transport costs for western products were higher than their value. The train is what made western land valuable. That land had value before the train came through was almost pure speculation -- people bought and settled land assuming that it would have value once a train arrived.

It was a real subsidy, but it was small and it was > 100 years ago.

OTOH, the land the freeways and roads were built on already had significant value before it was expropriated for road construction and wasn't paid for with diesel tax revenue, so it's yet another subsidy for truck traffic.

It's efficient in terms of energy, but slow after decades of neglect. People pay for fast.

Businesses will have an incentive to transport goods efficiently, if the costs are not subsidized by consumers.

Why does that matter? If you consume more toilet paper and paper towels and lumber, insulation, HVAC, pipes, and electrical components, then you would end up paying proportionally more.

Just because everyone benefits from it doesn’t mean it’s good to subsidize it.

Diesel, or rather energy, is also a way bigger part of every single aspect of our modern world. Let's take drinking a can of coke as an example:

First degree: It came into your home from the factory through the shop. 80% product + 20% diesel.

Second degree: Product is aluminum can + water + ingredients. Aluminium came to be a can through 70% refined aluminum + 15% diesel (transport) + 15% electrical energy (pressing the can). Water was pumped locally: free from the ground + 100% electrical energy. Ingredients came from a farm: 80% local product + 20% diesel.

Third degree: Electrical energy came from 40% gas turbines, 30% hydro, 30% wind farm. Ingredients from farms came from soil 40%, 35% nitrogen fertilizer (== gas), 25% diesel (machines)

... and so on

If you decompose everything all the way, the global tally is either matter, which is given to us by nature for free. Or energy; The sources of which being vastly composed of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel prices affect everything.

These fossil resources being finite we can also conclude we're experiencing a centuries-long hay-fire. But hey, we're merely plateauing right now; and most of us won't be here for the harder part of the crash.

And I didn't even mention climate change.

there are two sides of this argument.

only way we are able to eat affordable food is because some diesel truck is transporting it.

so maybe we must subsidize diesel fuel, to decrease grocery prices?

This should be a per-mile fee that varies based on weight, modeling road damage. Set the tax to specifically counteract the implicit subsidy.

Otherwise you are taxing diesel sedans and tractor trailers the same amount per gallon when a gallon to the latter does far more road damage.

I think this will be an unpopular opinion here, but I believe gas/diesel prices in the US should be much higher. That is needed force a move to renewals with the US gov. trying to foster more use of fossil fuels.

The way we are going, we are heading to a world that will be much harder and more expensive to live in.

Heavy trucks do more damage to roads so the fuel tax is higher.

Agricultural or ‘off road’ diesel is untaxed as the fuel tax is meant to pay for road maintenance, tractors and combine harvesters spend almost all of their time in a field and very little time on a road.