PUTTING THE BRAKES ON DELIVERIES

Everyone is feeling the pain at the pump but it's being felt particularly hard by delivery companies and non-profits.

Christina D'Amato, NCC News

Syracuse, NY- Nan Poole drives her mini-van three times a week for Meals on Wheels. As a volunteer, Nan brings hot dinners to the elderly and disabled.

But the national average for gas prices spiked to another all time high this week of three dollars, fourty cents a gallon, and Nan is suffering because she has to pay for her own gas.

But it's not just Nan, the whole agency, Meals on Wheels in Syracuse, has been squeezed by high gas prices. It's an agency whose purpose is to deliver well-balanced meals at the lowest possible cost to a client who is unable to shop or prepare such meals due to illness, disability or advaced age. So the staff also worries about a shrinking pool of volunteers who deliver more than 200,000 dinners door to door every year to 400 clients in Syracuse.


"Individuals who say they really would want to help, but when they think about the possible mileage, it may be inhibiting them from volunteering for us.," Edward Brown, Director of Volunteer Services, said.

"Meals on Wheels is a community driven agency. We depend on the community to support it, As it impacts them it impacts us," Mason Kaufman, Executive Director, said.

TAXIS

Gas approaching four dollars a gallon is also a hugh concern for taxi drivers, who spend on average 50 dollars a day on gas. That money coming out of their own paycheck because taxi rates are set by the city.

"I have to adjust my way of planning. The drivers in the east side, I wouldn't send them all the way to the south side to pick someone up," Sonny Singh, Owner of Blue Star Transportation, said.

Instead of multiple trips to the gas station to fill up the tank, Blue Star Transportation makes the customers wait.

"We're making the customer wait. The customer has to suffer for it because they won't get their cabs on time because the driver doesn't want to pay extra money for the gas," Singh said.

FLORISTS

And it's not just taxis, but consider businesses that depend on deliveries. Florist Dave Hoover, of Hoover Flowers, never turns customers away and will not carpool deliveries with other florists. Instead he's been raising prices to cover transportation costs. If you want flowers delivered by him, you have to pay a fee of 13 to 20 dollars just for delivery alone.

"It's just a fact of business either you pass your higher prices along or you lose business," Dave Hoover, Owner Hoover Flowers, said.

A LOOK TO THE FUTURE

No one knows what the future holds but economists say what goes up must come down. Even if it doesn't go down, people like Nan Poole, will continue delivering hot meals to the doorsteps of the needy.

"I'm going to continue doing it until there may be a point where I'm going to have to reduce my days but not totally give up the service," Nan Poole, Meals on Wheels Volunteer, said.