GAS: $4 a Gallon And Climbing

AVON PARK - Remember January, when gas was $3.25 a gallon? Wall Street analysts were predicting gasoline would sell for $4 a gallon this summer.

And here it is, still three weeks before summer begins, and the Shell convenience store in Avon Park just raised its price to $4.059 for a gallon of unleaded.

Don't blame it on the store, said Mohammed Shamim, the owner. The store is still making just two or three cents per gallon as its profit. But fuel sales are off 25 percent.

Since convenience stores use gasoline as a price leader to draw customers inside the store, sales of groceries are off 30 percent, Shamim said.

They'll get no sympathy from Robert Rode, who is in the landscaping business. His Dodge 2500 pickup pulls a trailer with two mowers on the back.

All his engines use premium unleaded, which recently zoomed from $4.29 to $4.40.
Plastered across the back of the 4x4 are bumper stickers.

"They say, 'Gas prices stink,'" laughed Rode.

Going Down
As gasoline prices have gone up, miles driven has declined, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. In March, driving declined 4.6 percent in Florida. Nationally, the difference is 11 billion fewer miles, when comparing April 2007 through March 2008 to the previous year.

But in Florida, the problem is compounded by the housing recession.

"My trouble is, the commercial people are so far off because of construction," said Dale Jones, of Jones Oil & Tire, who owns convenience stores and distributes the Sunoco brand gasoline to his own stores in Sebring, Lake Placid and Lorida.

Customers are telling him they're parking their diesel pickups in favor of mid-sized trucks like Ford Rangers. One is buying a Prius, which gets 45 miles per gallon.

"People are hurting," Jones said. "They're just trying to have enough money to go to work, buy gas and buy food."

What should be done?

"Everyone needs to call their congressman," Jones suggested. America needs to drill more oil wells, including the Florida coast, he said.

What people are doing is changing their attitudes, according to Stephen Reich, an analyst at the Center for Urban Transportation, at the University of South Florida. At $4 a gallon, the average American household will spend $4,000 a year commuting to work.