Rising energy costs driving lifestyle changes

Across the country, the rising cost of fuel is changing the way we live, work and run our businesses.

There’s a run on wood stoves in several metropolitan areas. In Denver, more businesses are letting employees work from home. Cities across the country report increases in mass transit ridership. In New Jersey, there's a move to let businesses with auto fleets hedge their gasoline purchases. In Milwaukee, business owners say their top concern is no longer the rising cost of healthcare; it's the soaring price of fuel.

With shortages and price spikes expected for natural gas and heating oil, wood furnace manufacturers and dealers are having trouble keeping up with new demand, the Pittsburgh Business Times reports.

The Business Times reports sales of wood-burning stoves in its area have reached levels not seen since the 1970s energy crisis.

"I am royally stuck here," Barb Metal, owner of the Ultimate Stove Shoppe in Gibsonia, Pa., told the Business Times. "There's a mass shortage."

Larry Brunk, president of L.B. Brunk and Sons, Inc., a supplier from Salem, Ohio, says he's selling stoves all over Ohio, Pennsylvannia and New York. "We're backed up several months," Brunk said.

And manufacturers are also having a hard time keeping up with production of wood pellets -- made from sawdust -- to burn in those stoves.

"It's crazy this year," said Terry Smith, co-owner of Summerhill, Pa.-based Wood Pellets Co., a division of C. & C. Smith Lumber Co. "Three years ago, we had 5,000 tons of pellets in stock. ... Now, we are at maximum capacity, and I don't know if we can keep up. Everybody is out selling all the stoves they can, but they can't get fuel. I don't know how to correct this. I don't know how much more sawdust is available."

While heating homes during the winter is a concern for the future, rising gasoline prices have already hit people in the pocket book. For many, they've hit hard enough to change habits.

Transit systems across the country reported big jumps in ridership earlier this month, thanks in large part to the gas price shocks caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

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