The statistics are telling. Overweight trucks cost taxpayers money.

Even legally overweight trucks can hammer and break up state, county and city roads.

Just look at Highway 9.

Emmet County Engineer Roger Patocka told the Emmet County Board of Supervisors Tuesday that one legally loaded truck equals the same road wear as 9,600 cars. A truck 20 percent overweight - something that can be legal - is equal to 19,000 cars going over the same road.

It would be ridiculous to even imagine 96,000 cars traveling Highway 9 between Estherville and Armstrong in a single day.

But it's not ridiculous to imagine the equivalent of over a million cars - in the form of trucks - traveling over the same route daily.

In fact it does happen.

Every day.

Every week.

Every year.

It stands to reason that after a few years a highway begins to resemble something in a war zone - chunks of concrete rather than a roadway. But that's what's happening to Emmet County roads as well as roads throughout the country.

Patocka said one county route that's getting hammered particularly hard is A22 on the north side of Armstrong. The reason for that, Patocka said, is a lot of traffic has been rerouted from Highway 9 to P13 and A22.

Patocka said a provision in state code allows ag operators to go 20 percent over and the governor can lift load limits entirely.

Some long loads traveling Highway 9 can weigh as much as 250,000 pounds, Patocka said.

"Highway 9 is a classic example of what happens" with heavy loads, Patocka said. He said he has photos of large grain wagons in his file that tried to haul 800 bushels of grain over a bridge - and ended up in the drink instead.

The county uses a heavier road surface for farm-to-market roads such as N40 going from Highway 9 to the elevator in Gruver. Regardless of the road surface, though, Patocka said all roads show more wear near intersections as trucks slow down, putting more pressure on road surfaces.

"It wears out like everything else," Patocka said.