LEBANON — Earlier this year, the biweekly paycheck Maya Morrison earns working as a licensed nursing assistant at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center covered her rent, car payment, and other living expenses, leaving about $100 for her to put towards her savings.
But as national fuel prices have skyrocketed following the start of the Iran war in February, that leftover $100 goes to paying for gas.
“It’s kind of disappointing because it takes up a lot of my paycheck,” Morrison, a 21-year-old Hanover resident, said on Wednesday afternoon while filling up her car at the Mobil gas station on Hanover Street in Lebanon where regular fuel is $4.59 a gallon.
Since the war with Iran began, fuel prices have increased sharply. In New England, gas prices have risen 57% between Feb. 23 and May 11, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
This week, the average price of gas in New Hampshire was $4.49 a gallon, and the average price in Vermont was $4.57 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.
The spike in cost has put strain on car owners such as Morrison, who already have little left over at the end of the month, as well as business owners who rely heavily on vehicles to carry out their work.
Like Morrison, increased gas prices have sucked up much of Lebanon High School senior Kailyn Rappaport’s earnings at her job as an instructor at Treehouse Gymnastics in Lebanon.
Rappaport commutes about 13 miles to high school from her home in Grantham. Her ride, a red 1998 Audi, only gets about 17 to 20 miles a gallon, and she usually has to stop for gas about two or three times a week, though she only fills the tank half way.
Her car requires premium gas, and Rappaport estimates she spends about $600 a month fueling it, an expense she takes on herself, without the help of her family.
These days, after she pays for gas, she only has about $3 leftover from her weekly paycheck, she said at the Hanover Street Mobil gas station in Lebanon on Wednesday.
She worries about how she’s going to bolster her savings, and she’s thinking about getting a second job for the summer.
“F–k the orange man. This is his fault,” she said, referring to President Donald Trump and the war with Iran.
While Rappaport is considering picking up a second job to compensate for fuel prices, Alex Klunder, a 39-year-old Lebanon resident, is thinking about making changes to his driving habits.
Before the war, it cost Klunder about $40 to fill the tank of his Pontiac. Now it costs about $65.
Klunder, who works in maintenance and housekeeping at the Quechee Club, expects he’ll start using his Ford Fiesta for longer journeys because it gets better mileage than the Pontiac, he said at the Hanover Street Mobil on Wednesday.
He acknowledged that higher gas prices are an unavoidable cost.
“You’ve got to get gas for your car,” he said.
Increased fuel prices have also placed a burden on business owners, especially those who heavily rely on vehicles in their line of work.
“When you’re a small business and margins aren’t huge, it kind of hurts,” said Rich Landry, founder of Cemetery Solutions, a cemetery maintenance service based in Thetford.
Landry has contracts with Norwich and Hartford to work on several of the towns’ cemeteries. The contracts were negotiated before the fuel prices spiked, meaning he wasn’t able to adjust his rate to compensate for the higher cost of fueling the trucks, excavator and mowers he uses in his business.
He estimates he’s spent about $1,000 in the past two weeks on gas alone, not including his vehicles that require diesel fuel.
In spite of the higher gas bill, he’s reluctant to ask the towns to change the current contracts, which are good through October.
“We try to treat everybody fair, and it’s not really their fault, but it’s not mine,” he said in a phone interview.
Indeed, increased fuel prices have been hitting towns hard as well.
In a May 14 update on Plainfield’s social media, the town administrator wrote that the town has “64% of the budget remaining with 60% of the year to go. It’s the $6.00 diesel and unknown cost of new asphalt that could quickly erode into the remaining budget.”
If the fuel prices stay this way, Landry predicts he’ll have to ask for higher pay from Norwich and Hartford to compensate for the increased fuel costs.
But for now, “we’re going to probably absorb most of it,” he said.
