I have noticed upon travelling this land of ours that a large number of 18-wheeler trailers seem to be registered in Tennessee. Has anyone else noticed and wondered why?
No.
I pay attention to obscure stuff and my anecdotal evidence doesn’t jive with your anecdotal evidence.
Lots of the national freight carriers are based in TN (such as Old Dominion).
Covenant Transport is based in Chattanooga.
Federal Express supposedly located its first hub in Memphis because of its central location. That may be the same reason many trucking firms located in the state.
When my wife worked for U-Haul a few years back. They started a program to register all their trucks and trailers in Arizona. It was explained to her that registration fees were a bit lower there.
When you have as many vehicles as they do it would make sense to register at a lower rate. Even a few cents or a dollar or two would mean large savings on a yearly basis.
I don’t know if that is the case in TN or not, but maybe.
So that’s why all the U-Hauls in the parking lot next to my condo here in Montreal have Arizona plates! Consider my ignorance fought.
Or it could be simply because U-Haul is based in Phoenix.
I think there is something to that. If you look at the large map you see how it is the center of a cluster of cities with large airports and Interstate Highway connections. Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Dallas, etc.
Not a bad place to be a domestic transportation hub.
Living in Middle Tennessee, I see almost as many trailers registered in Indiana on the interstate highways. Tennessee, Indiana and Nebraska are among some of the locations within a two day drive of 2/3 of the contigious US.
A former SO of mine, still a very good friend, is an economic developer for a city in Arkansas.
According to her, Fred Smith wanted to base Federal Express in Little Rock, Arkansas (including putting the first hub there), but couldn’t get the airport there to give him the sweetheart deal re: airport use that the airport authority in Memphis did.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that myself, but my friend’s in a much better position to know the facts than I am.
Cheers,
bcg