The price at the pump is hurting more than just drivers’ commutes. It’s also making the price of shipping go up.
Gateway Supply, a plumbing supply store near Myrtle Beach, relies on deliveries to get the supplies they sell, but the rising fuel cost throws a wrench in this company's pipes.
"A lot of times we'd give you a free delivery,” said Pat Duggan, a manager at Gateway Supply. “Now we have to charge for a longer term deliveries, or we have to wait till the truck is full before we can make a delivery. That puts a strain on our customers if they have an emergency."
But Duggan and the company have an emergency of their own; the price of what they sell is also tied in with the price of oil. PVC pipes are plastic, made from petroleum.
"If they [a plumber] bid the job to run your sewer line from the street to your house and they say, 'OK, I'm going to charge you $8 a foot,’ now they're going to have to charge you $10 a foot just because this fitting right here has oil in it. And the price of this fitting has jumped up so much."
Passing the expense on is one of the hardest parts of the fluctuating business for contractors like Larry Thomas.
"We start out negotiating prices with the supply houses to get the lowest price we can get,” said Thomas. “We work with the customer to make sure they get the items in their homes that they want. Sometimes having fore-go some of the luxury items, the higher end items to stay within that budget."
However, that does not get the cost down to what was promised to the customer so Thomas and Duggan have to absorb the cost.
"It gets down to this: hours for employees,” said Duggan. “They're working 40 hours a week. You have to cut them down to 35, and they have to do twice as much work in less time. You just got to push them."
Duggan said he hopes he won't have to cut anyone's hours over the cost of fuel because he is seeing business picking up.
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