A Gastonia business owner says that rising gas prices are having a direct impact on his business and may cause him to raise the prices his customers pay.
Nicholas Wall, one of the owners of Carolina Preferred Services, a business that fixes HVAC and electrical systems, said that his business operates 10 trucks in Gastonia, and the price of gas has gone up about $40 per truck a week.
“We can only sustain that so long before it’s going to drive the price of our service up,” he said.
Gas prices have risen sharply across the Charlotte region and in the Carolinas as the war in Iran impacts overseas oil supply routes. In Gastonia, gas at some stations cost as much as $3.59 a gallon for regular fuel. Patrick de Haan, head of Petroleum Analysis for GasBuddy, posted on X on March 16 that according to GasBuddy data, the national average price of gasoline rose to $3.70 a gallon, the highest level since Oct. 6, 2023.
“Americans today will spend $307 million more on gasoline than a month ago,” Haan wrote.
Carolina Preferred Services has been in existence for around four years, and this is the highest Wall has seen gas prices since his business opened. He said that he also has concerns that customers who are cutting costs will be reluctant to spend money on other things.
“If they can’t afford gas … they’re going to cut those costs, maybe not having their HVAC system repaired, or just not being able to afford some of these services,” he said.
He said that in the coming weeks, the owners of the business will have to evaluate their pricing.
“We try to once a month kind of evaluate the prices of what it’s costing us to do business and to get our trucks to people’s houses. It’s not going to be much longer before we would have to raise our prices if gas continues to climb like this,” he said. “The next two weeks, if we’re not seeing a change, we’re going to have to make some adjustments to our pricing.”
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Gastonia business may raise prices as gas prices rise
