Owners of landscaping companies are being hit hard by these price hikes, as the have to purchase gas for their equipment, including trucks, lawn mowers and chain saws.

?EUR??,,????'??I just paid $84,?EUR??,,????'?? said J.T. Edwards, who had pulled his late model GMC pickup into a Fort Walton Beach, Fla. Tom Thumb convenience store. Actually, his total was $84.35 for 23.7 gallons.

Edwards, a 23-year-old who graduated from Fort Walton Beach High School, owns a landscaping business called Edwards Management.

?EUR??,,????'??I?EUR??,,????'???ll be putting another $60 into my lawnmowers,?EUR??,,????'?? he said. ?EUR??,,????'??Cost is going up and the profit margin is shrinking. ?EUR??,,????'??? We have to spend more to earn less.?EUR??,,????'??

For Varsity Landscaping in Virginia, a three-acre property adds up to a nice chunk of change, but on the down side it takes a lot of gas to get the job done.

“Whether its trucking the mulch from out of town, loading it with loaders, gas for weed eaters, lawn mowers, truck to get to jobs and give estimates… there’s fuel in everything,” says Mike Anderson of Varsity Landscaping.

Anderson says a typical lawn service with a three-man crew guzzles about 40 gallons of gas. So far, he hasn’t had to pass on too much of that cost to the consumer.

“I don’t think the price has trickled down all the way yet, so the consumer has not seen that much of an increase,” says Anderson.

However, he says with summer promising even hotter prices at the pump, cutting the cost for consumers may no longer be an option.

“As they go up, it’s going to trickle down back to the consumer as our vendors have to keep increasing our prices,” says Anderson. “So we have to start increasing ours, too.”

Bud Bruns, owner of The Greenworks landscaping company in Bangor, Maine, said he is firmly opposed to passing on fuel costs to his customers, even though it?EUR??,,????'???s costing him a bundle to run his fleet of eight trucks and numerous chain saws, lawnmowers, backhoes and other equipment.

“You can?EUR??,,????'???t pass it on, so you?EUR??,,????'???re just going to make less money,” Bruns said Monday. Bruns has been busy giving estimates for summer work but said he suspects many people will opt to do their own yard work this summer.

A recently released energy report from CIBC World Markets offers little hope for lower gasoline prices.

The report notes increasingly tight oil supplies will continue to push the price of oil higher with the cost of crude hitting US$150 a barrel by 2010 and soaring to US$225 a barrel by 2012.

This will result in skyrocketing consumer gas prices in the U.S. with the national average price easily topping $4.00 this summer, reaching $5.50 in the summer of 2010 and hitting close to $7.00 by 2012.

The report finds that current oil production estimates produced by the International Energy Agency (IEA) overstate supply by about nine per cent since it counts natural gas liquids in its numbers. The report notes that natural gas liquids, while valuable hydrocarbons, are not a viable substitute for oil and cannot be economically used as a feedstock for gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.

“While natural gas liquids only account for 10 per cent of total supply, they account for virtually all of the increase in petroleum liquids production since 2005,” says Jeff Rubin, Chief Strategist and Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets. “Stripping out natural gas liquids, oil production has not grown for over two years, which certainly goes a long way to explaining why oil prices have doubled over that period.?EUR??,,????'??

How are increasing gasoline prices affecting your business? Let us know by commenting on this article by clicking on the link at the top of this story.