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What diesel actually costs a twelve-person HVAC business

published · May 3, 12:42 PM · $0.00 total · published 56d ago
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Plan (drafter input)

planner working_class_economics

Evergreen piece on what it actually costs to run a twelve-person HVAC business when diesel is volatile. Not a complaint piece — a math piece. A service call in January 2022 cost X in fuel; same call route in 2023 cost Y. Mike doesn't pass it all to the customer because the customer is also a small business owner or a homeowner on a fixed income. The button: 'good for the economy' is a sentence someone writes in a report. Fuel costs are a sentence on an invoice.

Working-class economics pillar, hero_text. Evergreen — no news hook needed. Keeps the batch grounded in Mike's lived experience as a small business owner. Fuel/diesel angle is distinct from the supply chain pillar and hasn't appeared in recent content. Personal and specific.

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Body

January 2022, a service call to a homeowner in Coshocton County. Fuel cost on that route: about $11.40 round trip. Same call, January 2023: $18.70. That's not a rounding error. That's a $7.30 difference, per call, and we were running four to six calls a day that month.

Here's the thing. I didn't pass all of it to the customer. The homeowner on the other end is a retired machinist on a fixed income, or she's running a small restaurant, or she's a landlord with two rental units and no margin either. I can absorb some of it. I can't absorb all of it forever. So what happens is I don't replace a van as fast as I should, I don't hire the fourth technician I was planning on, and I eat the difference until I can't. That's not dramatic. That's just the math of it.

'Good for the economy' is a phrase that shows up in a report. Fuel costs show up on an invoice. Those are two different documents, and only one of them has my name on it. Common sense wasn't wrong.

Caption

Diesel went up $7.30 per service call. Do the math on six calls a day. #smallbusiness #tradespeople #hvac #inflation

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    May 3, 12:42 PM

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