Thu, Nov 26 2009
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Gas drives prices up She said she went to a local grocery store Monday, and spent $7 on a can of tuna, a gallon of milk and two bags of pasta.
“Oh my God, it didn’t used to cost me that much,” Navarro said. “It’s crazy.” And now, the high gas prices are affecting her future. Navarro was planning to visit a friend in San Diego, Calif., this summer, but she recently canceled the trip because she couldn’t afford it. “I can’t believe we’ve allowed this to affect our lives,” she said. “The whole world spins around the price of a gallon of gas.” She worries that her business will suffer this spring, when her nursery usually does its best sales, because people cut out extras such as landscaping when their budgets get tight. “People can live without pretty, but we all need to eat,” she said. Even eating is becoming more difficult to afford, said Mike Wiggins, owner of Granny Shaffer’s and Continental Catering in Joplin and Webb City. Wiggins said many restaurants have been absorbing increased fuel-related shipping costs without passing them on to consumers. But that can only last so long. “It’s killing us, but we’re trying to keep our prices down,” he said. In his last supply shipment, Wiggins said, all but five of his 100 items went up in price. Trash bags — a petroleum-based product — went up $10. His suppliers and shipping companies recently added fuel surcharges of $3.50 to $7 a truck to help make up for the added gas prices. He said he gets 20 trucks a week, and his monthly bills have gone up more than $400 because of fuel prices. ‘It would kill us’ Freight companies say they have no choice but to charge their customers the fuel surcharges. John Laughlin, a Joplin driver for Frontier Leasing Inc., spent more than $500 filling up his truck Monday. Jeff Thurman, chief financial officer for Sitton Motor Lines in Joplin, said his company has surcharge agreements with all its customers that fluctuate weekly based on the national average price of diesel. “Surcharges have been around for a long time, but the prices have jumped up quite a bit in the last couple of weeks,” Thurman said. “It would kill us if we didn’t have them.” Even with the surcharges, he said, fuel costs still make up 26 percent of the company’s annual expenditures. And Thurman doesn’t expect prices to go anywhere but up. “The overall trend is up, and I don’t see that changing,” he said. And there’s not much consumers can do, said Right, with AAA. 
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