Ben Griffin serves lunch to a customer at the Pawleys Mobile Eats truck in Columbia.
/ Adam Pinsker
Columbia, (WACH) - Each time Ben Griffin starts the Pawleys restaurant mobile food truck it costs his business a hundred bucks, and the longer it runs the larger the tab.
"I got to fill up with gas and propane,” said Griffin. “The price of propane is almost as expensive as gas, and I have to fill up every day on both."
State petroleum official Michael Fields says speculators are making billions of dollars betting on the price of gas going up while people like Griffin are scraping by.
"What's going on right now is excessive speculation on Wall Street is driving the price of crude oil up," said Fields.
"We have to charge, almost a tank of gas to come out to a private or any kind of event that we're doing," adds Griffin.
Griffin recently cancelled a trip to Charleston because it was too expensive to fill up the gas guzzling food truck, but that doesn't mean he's putting the brakes on his mobile lunch service.
"You always got to keep moving. There's no staying idle in this business."
High gas prices another obstacle in the road for Griffin as he tries to keep his customers happy.
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