Delivery businesses feeling effects
The effects of Hurricane Katrina are being felt throughout the area, even though this region was spared the flooding. The trucking industry, and other businesses that rely on deliveries, are being particularly hard hit.
Russ Cabot, president of Chestnut Ridge Express in Lemont Furnace, a flatbed platform carrier service brokering trucking services cross country, said he had to add four cents to the company’s fuel surcharge Thursday to help cover the rising cost of diesel fuel.
“Some of the shippers don’t want to pay the higher fuel surcharge, but you have to get it. In the last several months, my fuel bill has gone from $800 to $1,200 a week,” Cabot said.
The trucking brokerage has six trucks at its Lemont Furnace location, but handles about 500 trucks daily, including independent truckers. Cabot said he tries to line up jobs for the truckers that keep their trucks loaded both coming and going.
“You’re only getting the fuel surcharge on loaded miles,” Cabot said.
Cabot recalls buying diesel fuel for 18 cents a gallon.
“When I started driving these things, you could fill a truck up for $35. As of today’s prices, it’s $900. That’s a lot of difference,” Cabot said.
Cabot said he has more people who want freight hauled than he has drivers to take it at the moment.
“I’ve had a couple drivers tell me that if it gets much higher, they’re just going to shut down until it breaks,” Cabot said. “I had a driver in Georgia who said there was a place selling (diesel) for $5 a gallon. That’s just price gouging.”
Carl DellaPenna owns nine NAPA Auto Parts stores including those in Brownsville, Uniontown, Scottdale and Belle Vernon, with about 80 percent of the business involving deliveries.
DellaPenna said his business is being hit by the skyrocketing gas prices. He said his usual fuel bill is around $14,000 a month.
“We have almost 50 vehicles on the road every day. Gas prices had been killing me, and now, we’re paying about double what we paid last year,” DellaPenna said.
DellaPenna said he has auto parts going out daily to repair garages.
He is currently absorbing the added gasoline costs, but he doesn’t know how long he can continue to do that.
“We’ve got to do something. We’ll either have to increase our prices or add a delivery charge,” DellaPenna said.
Joe Gaydos, at O.C. Cluss Lumber Company in Uniontown, said the problem with domestic oil production hasn’t affected the cost of oil-based building products such as shingles yet.
“We’re pretty well stocked up, so that’s something we won’t see for weeks or months down the road. We’re not gouging like the gas companies,” Gaydos said.
Don Diguglielmo, owner of the Grindstone Foodland, said the increased shipping hasn’t affected store prices yet.
“There’s a fuel surcharge on our trucks, but it’s been there for a couple of years,” Diguglielmo said.
Diguglielmo said it seems to be hitting the independent vendors the hardest, since the drivers are expected to cover the increased costs themselves.
Hurricane Katrina has affected natural gas production in the gulf, as well as oil production and refining. Columbia Gas spokesman Rob Boulware said that while Columbia doesn’t own any wells in the gulf region, it does have a transmission line there and it does purchase some of its natural gas supply from the affected area.
“We won’t know what the impact will be until we hear from suppliers whether their facilities were damaged,” Boulware said.
Boulware said Columbia has been purchasing and storing natural gas since April for the coming winter. Less than 15 percent of the natural gas used in this area is produced here from local wells. The rest is purchased from the gulf region, Canada and other sources, Boulware said.
“We were anticipating price increases before this event,” Boulware said.
Boulware said Columbia Gas has until Oct. 1 to file its gas cost recovery fees with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. He said more information will be needed from the suppliers in the Gulf region before that cost can be determined.