For Rick Kier, owner of Pro-Scapes the season brings about a lot of work. Regardless of whether you’re doing spring clean-ups, mulching, edging, fertilizing or mowing it costs thousands of dollars in fuel to get the job done.

Kier expects to spend more than $8,000 dollars for gas during the month of May to fill up his many mowers, trimmers and trucks. “For the month of May for example, it was about $1,300 dollars more than the prior year and this year it will probably be a couple thousand dollars more than that.” Customers are starting to felt the impact in their wallets as Kier has started charging customers up to 6% more this year than last to make ends meet.

One option more and more landscapers are looking into like Kier, is to replace trucks with hybrid cars. However, green options don’t exist for the majority of landscaping equipment, which means everyday fill-ups are needed, no matter how high the prices soar.

Some landscapers are raising their prices, however some have already entered into contracts with homeowners or businesses for the season, which leads them to hope that prices will start to level off or drop as summer begins.