  Transport through molecular devices with strong coupling to a single
vibrational mode is considered in the case where the vibration is damped by
coupling to the environment. We focus on the weak tunneling limit, for which a
rate equation approach is valid. The role of the environment can be
characterized by a frictional damping term $\mysig(\omega)$ and corresponding
frequency shift. We consider a molecule that is attached to a substrate,
leading to frequency-dependent frictional damping of the single oscillator mode
of the molecule, and compare it to a reference model with frequency-independent
damping featuring a constant quality factor $Q$. For large values of $Q$, the
transport is governed by tunneling between displaced oscillator states giving
rise to the well-known series of the Frank-Condon steps, while at small $Q$,
there is a crossover to the classical regime with an energy gap given by the
classical displacement energy. Using realistic values for the elastic
properties of the substrate and the size of the molecule, we calculate $I$-$V$
curves and find qualitative agreement between our theory and recent experiments
on $C_{60}$ single-molecule devices.
