I am surprised that no one has blogged about the rising fuel prices and how this may affect our delivery business. I have a great group of drivers but there has been some grumbling about the cost of gas AND it’s costing more for them to fill their tanks and deliver.
Shitty thing was that while doing cleanup the news ran a story on how gas is predicted to get as high as 5 per gallon this coming Summer.
If it goes much above $4 I am going to have to bump the delivery charge. Overall things are improving a little and I would hate to kill it with an increase but I think the consumer will understand.
For the sake of argument lets do some figuring with some basic assumptions.
[list]1.Average distance per delivery 2.5 miles
2.Average fuel consumption during deliveries 20 miles per gallon[/list]
That results in 8 deliveries per gallon of gas. If you are increasing the delivery fee just to cover the cost of gas then you divide the increase in gas price by 8 to get the increase in fees charged. If the price of gas increases by $2 your average cost per delivery would increase by 25 cents.