Companies often have their official headquarters far away from their real home turf in order to take advantage of various rules, and trucking transport firms are no exception. A Texas trucking firm wound up using Oregon as their official home in order to take advantage of a state tax credit that paid 35% of the cost of energy-saving engine upgrades; over 700 of the firms trucks were outfitted with auxiliary diesel engines that take over during idling situations, with $4.5 million of the tab getting paid by Oregon taxpayers.
The firm had set up a token office in the state and plated their trucks in Oregon, but did less than 1% of their business in Oregon; quite a bit of the truck upgrades were done in El Paso, which didn’t please officials in Oregon. However, the firm was working under the letter of the law, as they used Oregon as a flag of convenience, much as ships will set up shop in Panama or Liberia or corporations will incorporate in Delaware. For $700/truck, firms will be more than happy to call Timbuktu home, if it means being able to have lower freight rates.
When you give out subsidies, you get more of what you’re subsidizing. The trick for regulators is to make sure they’re getting what they’re looking for, which wasn’t the case with the El Paso loophole-maestro. Since interstate transport is part and parcel of modern trucking, firms can plate their trucks in wherever locale it makes financial since to do so.
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.s...exas_truck.html
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