Fuel prices weigh heavy on businesses

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This article was published 14/03/2022 (1681 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The rise in gas prices is hitting hard at the pumps, but it’s going to cost Brandonites in other ways, too.

With diesel at 186.9 cents a litre and regular gas reaching 173.9 cents a litre in Brandon on Monday, some local businesses are having to offload some expenses onto consumers.

At Brandon Bus Lines, office manager Jeanelle Hassard said the charter bus company held out for as long as it could, but it will soon have to raise its user fees.

“Fuel prices are going through the roof, and on top of that, the carbon tax is being raised [soon] as well, so we’re definitely feeling the impact,” she said.

According to Hassard, the price of fuel started to become more unbearable over the last month. The company’s fuel providers warned them the price was going to increase and will likely end up rising even more by the start of summer.

“We went from paying something like $1.40 per litre and were told to brace for it to go as high as $2.10 per litre,” Hassard said.

The next factor in the increasing price of the diesel that Brandon Bus Lines uses will likely occur on April 1 when the federal levy on carbon will jump from 8.05 cents per litre to 10.73 cents.

If the federal government wants to help businesses like theirs, Hassard said they could remove the carbon tax or cap the maximum price of gas.

“Are we going to wake up one day and be paying $10 a litre?” she asked. “There has to be a stop to it. It has to be restricted at some point.”

One thing going in the company’s favour is that some of the business lost during the pandemic when events were being cancelled and tourism was subdued, is returning.

Hassard said services are already being booked for hockey tournaments, and she hopes schools will soon book year-end trips. The return of marquee events like Dauphin’s Countryfest this year also offers some optimism.

At Full Tilt Towing, operations manager D.K., who wanted to be identified by only his initials, said his company also tried to hold off raising its prices as long as it could but has had to make changes.

“Unfortunately, we kinda have to pass the prices on to our customers,” he said. “It’s just going to cause the price of everything to increase … we held out in the hopes that we wouldn’t have to do that to our customers and hopefully the prices would come down, but it hasn’t, obviously.”

Full Tilt ended up raising its prices last week. According to D.K., current fuel prices are the worst he has seen while working at the company.

Asked if he’d like to see assistance from some level of government, D.K. said he’s not expecting a handout, but would like to see the government build more pipelines and develop Canada into being more self-sustainable when it comes to oil and gas.

A delivery driver for multiple online delivery services in Brandon, who asked to remain anonymous, said via email that with inflation and the rising cost of gas, they and their partner have decided it’s not worth it anymore.

They wrote the average price per delivery run is around $4 to $5.25, which hardly covers long trips across town unless customers are tipping. In Brandon, they say tipping is rare and they have better luck in Winnipeg.

“Yes, these delivery companies need to compensate for the increase in fuel costs, but customers should also realize that staying home and having food delivered is a privilege and that drivers are out in all kinds of weather, so spending a couple of extra dollars on a tip is appreciated more than they know.”

Fuel prices are also harming the City of Brandon’s finances, but the exact damage is still being calculated.

“Recent increases in fuel prices are larger than what was anticipated in the current budget,” a city spokesperson wrote in an email last week. “There will most certainly be an impact to the budget that will have to be accounted for, but until such time as the first budget review is conducted at the end of April, it is difficult to fully gauge what that impact will be.”

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