Gas prices rise above $4 a gallon, impacting local businesses

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“Diesel was $5.60 this morning where we filled up. We can burn 300 gallons in a day easily,” Tyler Mobley, of JT’s Tree Services LLC, said.

Mobley said this year’s quick spike in prices was unexpected and they weren’t prepared.

“It rose so fast,” he told News Center 7’s Kylie Bridgeman. “We’re scheduling three weeks, four weeks out - five, six weeks sometimes. We couldn’t even absorb that cost into our quotes.”

Jared Pincin, Associate Professor of Economics at Cedarville University, said Mobley’s company isn’t alone. High fuel prices are worrying wallets across industries.

“A job that was profitable at one price point is no longer profitable at your new cost,” Pincin said. “So typically, a contractor or businessperson will put some sort of contingency.”

Pincin pinpointed work like tree service as an area impacted, but said airlines are among the hardest hit.

“A ticket that they sold a month or two ago might not be the same price as what they’d want to charge now because their input costs have gone up,” he explained.

Pincin added that businesses all around are just trying to keep up.

As for JT’s, they have to pass along costs to consumers to stay successful.

“We try not to pass that cost on to the customer, but you have to at some point,” Mobley said. “There’s no way to stay profitable, stay in business without somebody taking on the extra cost.”

Pincin told News Center 7 that it’s really important to remember inflation as we think about record prices. He said if we were hitting record highs, gas would be more than $6 a gallon.

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