The road haulage lobby briefly grabbed a bit of attention last month when they blamed the victims killed by their industry: http://beyondthekerb.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/cyclists-go-truck-yourselves/
But really, the history of their practices is worth looking at. Mick Hamer (yes, this Mick Hamer) in Wheels Within Wheels reviews how the road freight industry has a history of widespread lawbreaking, lobbying to legalise their behaviour, then afterwards stepping up a gear to break the revised laws — on speed, size, weight, and everything else. Like the boiling frog, we’ve barely noticed as trucks have got bigger, faster, heavier and more destructive in small but frequent increments.
So I noticed in the Stuff Pile these cuttings and site records from 1998, when my father was making the county safe for the last-but-one incremental increase in truck size…