Steve Gardiner is the co-proprietor of Gardiner's Transport, a family-owned moving and transportation company in Goderich, Ont. Its primary business is the transportation of general freight including salt, plastic, household goods, bulk milk, packaged milk, ice, ice cream and garden mulch. Gardiner's has 32 employees and operates about 30 vehicles, ranging from pick-up trucks to straight trucks to tractor trailers, along with some industrial equipment. It has been in business in Goderich since 1959 (before that, Gardiner's family owned and operated an Ontario dairy in Southampton and Owen Sound, back in the horse and wagon days).

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Steve Gardiner, co-proprietor of Gardiner's Transport. CBCnews.ca: How have rising fuel prices affected your business?

Steve Gardiner: Escalating fuel prices force you to consider increasing your freight rates. However, other transportation companies, including us, try to hold on as long as possible hoping to pick up other customers from companies who make the move to increases — usually through fuel surcharges — too early. If they do, the customer finds someone else to haul their goods for them.

What has that meant for your customers?

In the end, the consumer does pay. Someone has to, because sooner or later there will be less moving companies, less competition and a real desire to make some money again.

It seems to be a case of who can wait the longest or who has the deepest pockets. In the end, the ones who hold on too long will go broke.

Meanwhile, if you can find a way to reduce your costs, the biggest two being labour and fuel, it lets you stay in the game longer — hopefully allowing you to pick up the orphan customers.

How will your business adapt if fuel prices continue to rise in the coming months?

This is not the end of rising fuel costs. It's going to get a lot worse and will never get better until an alternative to oil is found.

'The technology is not perfect yet, but with the price of fuel going up almost daily, it drives more and more "inventors" to work on alternatives to fossil fuels.'—Steve Gardiner

Hydrogen fuel injection, or any other fuel-efficiency booster, if it can do what they claim, could be a saver. Technology is very close to allowing us to save 25 per cent to 50 per cent in fuel costs on each truck we operate, in addition to huge reductions in greenhouse gas and other harmful emissions. This could add up to thousands of dollars in savings every month, even for a relatively small operator like ourselves.

The technology is not perfect yet, but with the price of fuel going up almost daily, it drives more and more "inventors" to work on alternatives to fossil fuels.

I believe the internet is making a big difference: These days, the passing on of information and improvements that are made is in real time and delivered to others working on the same technology, enabling them to learn from each other. They seem to be a younger generation who are not afraid to try something — and if it doesn't work, they try again. Also, they are much more willing to share information with each other.