Pain at the pump is nothing new, but unlike consumers who can choose to walk rather than drive or find other ways to save on today's skyrocketing fuel costs, businesses that rely on vehicles to get the job done are feeling the pain. Many have little choice but to pass additional costs on to their customers.
"In our industry, we sort of rely on home sales. We're having a tough time already, and now to have added expense" puts extra pain on the company, said John May, owner of the moving company Two Men and a Truck. "To pass it on to the customer is bad timing, I guess. Business is already slower, and here we are having to charge the customer more."
Transitioning to smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles or riding a bike as he does in his personal life is not an option for May's moving business. "We actually have not raised our rates since October of '05, but we did just recently in the past 30 days add a fuel surcharge, which has become pretty common in a lot of transportation companies," he said. "What that allows us to do is, if for some reason gas prices go back down, we'll take that back off."
May should be getting a small reprieve from some of his fuel costs as the weather warms, though the prices usually climb in summer travel months, May's fleet of seven diesel trucks can be shut down in warm weather, unlike in the winter when diesel engines need to run while idling. May's diesels boast slightly better fuel efficiency over his singular gasoline-powered rig, but the price of diesel, until recently priced less than regular gas, has managed to climb higher than even premium octane gasoline, according to a U.S. Department of Energy Web site.
"It's a necessary thing to have to pass some of this on to the consumer," May said.
But that would mean breaking tradition to Harriet Collier, owner of Hart's Drycleaning and Laundry, whose company has offered free delivery for around 40 years. "This has always been our policy, and I don't see it changing at this point," she said. "It certainly is a grave concern, and it affects all of us in every different way, everything that's shipped in to us, everything that's trucked in to us."
Already Collier has seen the price of supplies rise, as they have across industries because of increasing transportation costs and rising costs for manufacturing processes that require the use of petroleum, on top of tariffs placed on foreign products.
"There has been a slight increase, but it is pretty typical; it is not a major increase at all," Collier said about Hart's prices. "I think everybody understands that's the difficulty."
Consumers are at least beginning to understand the difficulty, because they are forced to start making cutbacks of their own, according to Ken Troske, director of UK's Center for Business and Economic Research. "People are coming around, starting to believe this is going to be permanent, prices are going to be higher, 'I'm going to have to adjust my lifestyle,'" he said.
Regardless of unemployment rates and maintenance of salary levels, economic times like this have a negative impact on the populous as a whole. "An increase in prices in essence makes you poorer," Troske said.
One of the first places Jim Davis, owner of four area coffee shops and a coffee and espresso repair service, looked for efficiencies was in his routing, just as both Two Men and a Truck and Hart's did.
"A lot of it is just planning ahead. Planning routes, what (materials) you get as opposed to what you get delivered," said Davis, who recently doubled his number of coffee shops, which include Lexington's Common Grounds. "It used to be I would make two trips to repair something. If I didn't have the part in stock, I would overnight it and go back out; now I have all of my parts on hand so I don't have to do that."
In the past year, Davis said he put more than 40,000 miles on his small SUV on service calls and running between his shops in Lexington, Danville, Nicholasville and Stanford. He figures he spends $700 a month on gas. Last year, Davis got rid of his Isuzu Rodeo, which got around 15 miles per gallon on the highway, in favor of a Scion xB, which has been rolling along at 35 mpg.
Recently, Davis said he has raised his prices by $15 an hour from his introductory rate, but he does not charge customers for his travel - sometimes taking him as far as Pikeville and Somerset - nor does he charge a customer if he can't fix the machine. "If I drive 50 miles and I can't fix it, I eat it."
With prices hovering in the $4 range for diesel and not much less for gas, it's a lot for businesses to eat. May said his company was essentially moving people for free before the gas surcharge, as the labor costs largely go to the laborers.
UK's Troske said the consumer is going to have to get used to covering more of the rising costs of energy consumed in manufacturing and shipping products. "It is going to affect the price of goods, because it involves the transportation of goods," he said.