Inflation impact on Lake Area lawn businesses
A Lake Charles Landscaping company tells 7News how the gas prices impact his business
Lake Charles, LA (KPLC) - You may be paying more for your usual landscaping and inflation is now having an effect on Lake Area lawn businesses.
The Grounds Guys are hard at work maintaining yards this season.
Nathaniel Allured said maintaining his business has been tougher with price tags constantly increasing:
“The things that we use on a day to day basis have gone up anywhere from on the low end, 25% and some things are up as much as 400%, literally 4 times more expensive now than they were 18 months ago,” said Allured.
It’s not just inflation impacting the industry. The 2021 freeze is still disrupting the supply of plant material.
“Plant price is up 15-25% depending on what it is, and in addition to that we just have availability problems, there are certain things that we can’t get at certain times and then the specimens themselves are. They tend to run smaller than they were,” said Allured.
The Grounds Guys service properties from Lake Charles to Hackberry.
“On average, our teams are gonna serve about 12-15 properties per truck when they’re out mowing, and we are consuming roughly 400 gallons of fuel per week, between gasoline and diesel,” said Allured.
Those gas price hikes are adding yet another challenge to their already busy summer season.
“That roughly 100% increase over 18 months on that consumption certainly adds up and drives our overhead up and of course we have to adjust pricing accordingly in order to ensure the business can survive these types of price increases,” said Allured.
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