BRAINTREE, Mass. — Delivering home heating oil, these days, also means delivering bad news.
“A lot of people come to the door right away and they ask what’s the price today -- and do I even want to know,” said Jeff Craig, a service technician with Brow Oil. “And I just say don’t look at that ticket ‘til after I leave. I don’t want you getting upset with me.”
What oil customers may be upset over: a sudden, sharp rise in prices over the last two weeks that’s taken the per-gallon cost to unprecedented levels.
“Oil deliveries used to be 300 dollars,” said Brow Oil President Richard Brow. “Now some of them are a thousand.”
Brow said prices began climbing after President Biden’s March 1 State of the Union Address -- and they’ve generally gone in only one direction since then.
“Prior to last week, the biggest price jump I ever saw was something like ten cents,” said Brow. “I think one day it went up forty-five cents or fifty cents -- in one day.”
The cumulative damage: about three bucks more a gallon in ten days’ time.
“We are somewhere around four and a half dollars now,” Brow said. “We had gotten up into the $5 range, which is higher than we’ve ever been in 68 years of being in business.”
And it’s a business with little financial margin for error.
“The problem companies like mine have is, you have to pay for your oil in ten days,” Brow said. “The truck rolls out of the terminal... in ten days (payment) comes out of your account.”
The problem is, Brow Oil has a 30-day billing cycle -- and when prices go up fast, the company has to scramble to keep enough money in that account.
“So the main thing is, you’ve got to have financing in place,” Brow said. “Because if they go for that money and you’re five cents short, you’re shut-off. No more oil. And if you can’t pick up oil you’re all done.”
Brow said some of his customers will need time to pay off an oil delivery.
“My company’s not very big,” he said. “A lot of my customers I’ve had for decades. So it’s not a question of will they pay for the oil -- it’s just how long. And a lot of the customers I take care of -- I know they’re good for it.”
Anne Bregoli of Braintree got oil delivered from Brow last week. She’s been a customer more than 20 years.
“I think it’s absolutely incredible that the elderly have to go through this,” she said. “I’m getting close to the age of retirement and I’m thinking. if this continues how are we going to do it. It must be very hard for those on a limited income. You know, do I pay the oil, do I get my meds, do I get my food?.”
One silver lining to this round of price increases -- they are coming at a time when demand should begin to wane as warmer weather prevails.
‘Should’ is the operative word, Brow suggested.
“There’s one thing that I’m sure of -- that I don’t know what’s going to happen with the price of oil,” Brow said. “If you think something can’t go higher, it goes higher.”
But Brow is sure about one thing.
“When the price of oil gets high like this, there are no winners,” he said.
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