How is everyone handling the rising gas prices? Are you raising rates? Hoping they come back down (not holding my breath)?
We built our business around being fair to the customer — no price gouging, no inflated margins. But filling the tank is starting to be a full day's work in itself.
Curious what other small home service businesses are doing to stay afloat without passing all of it onto the client.
To offset rising gas prices, we focus heavily on operational efficiency and smarter scheduling. Whenever possible, service calls are organized by borough or geographic area to reduce unnecessary travel time, fuel consumption, and vehicle wear. We also combine multiple maintenance visits within the same area to maximize efficiency while keeping response times reliable.
I agree with focus on operational efficiency. I have retrained my guys to better using equipment, equipment maintenance which all has increased life and better use. Along with how we focus on working together when doing a project to cut time and cost. We all agreed that it has helped in the past 6 months and it has cut our fuel cost down about 37%. This includes scheduling people living in the same geographic areas on the same week or day. The first 2 weeks were a headache but turned out 100% better and the crews love it.
