Shippers passing along rising fuel costs

Gasoline, heating oil and diesel fuel prices continue to rise, and shippers and truckers say the higher costs of transporting goods are starting to be passed along to consumers.

The price of futures contracts for crude oil and fuels fell in trading early Thursday on bad economic news from the United States, China and Spain, but then changed direction after wire service reports that police in Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, used force to quell an anti-government protest. U.S. crude for April delivery still settled down $1.68 at $102.70 at the close of New York floor trading.

Internet postings have called for "Day of Rage" protests Friday in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait and Bahrain. Senior analyst Darin Newsom of Telvent DTM, of Omaha, which provides news and analysis for commodities investors, says the events could be critical in deciding future energy supplies and prices. "The market is certainly watching it closely," he said.

Regular gasoline averaged $3.766 on Long Island Thursday, the AAA said, up 11.4 cents from a week earlier and almost 85 cents a gallon higher than a year earlier. Home heating oil jumped by 12.7 cents in the week that ended Monday, to $4.067 in a state survey of full-service dealers in Nassau and Suffolk. Diesel fuel, which powers most large trucks, was $4.166 a gallon, up 12.5 cents in a week and up by more than $1 a gallon from a year ago, the AAA said.

Kendra Adams, president of Albany-based New York State Motor Trucking Association, says her members can pass higher costs to customers only if hauling contracts provide for it. "If they have an opportunity to increase their rates, then obviously that's going to trickle down to the consumer," she said.

Even when contracts allow fuel surcharges, competition in a sluggish economy makes it more difficult to impose them than during the fuel price surge of 2008, said Robert Bohm, who hauls sand, gravel, topsoil and the like in two dump trucks he and his son operate out of West Hempstead. "The problem with a price increase right now is that, for everybody who is doing the work, there are three other people looking for it," he said.

Truckers say they also worry about an indirect effect of rising fuel prices: a decline in demand for whatever they haul, such as the sand that Bohm's company hauls.

At Jerry Shulman Produce Shipper Inc. of Hicksville, company president Diane Shulman says consumers are already paying more for certain items at the supermarket because of rising shipping costs. "Fuel surcharges are going up as we speak," said Shulman, whose business ships produce nationwide, including potatoes purchased from Long Island farmers for retail sale.