Fuel prices are rising, but despite calls to decrease fuel excise costs, truck drivers have warned that may not solve the cost problems for businesses and consumers.
The Livestock and Rural Transporters Association SA president Frank Tedesco said the high fuel prices had not only impacted truck businesses, but also their customers.
"The businesses can't bear the additional cost in the price of the fuel, so then that cost has to be passed onto the consumer," he said.
"Then the price of Weet Bix on the shelves goes through the roof, so it's a bit of a no-win situation at the moment."
Due to the high fuel prices, Mr Tedesco said he had found people had been searching for the most cost-effective transport business.
"You could have the most loyal customers, that have been with you a long time and most of the loyal customers will stick with you, but some won't," he said.
"As soon as you change your price they'll go looking somewhere else to try get a better price.
"It's not that you want more money, it's about recovering costs and customers do look for alternatives to pay less."
Mr Tedesco said the price of fuel had been gradually increasing over the last few months.
"In the last few months the prices of fuel have probably gone up 40 to 45 cents a litre over a short period of time," he said.
"In that period of time the price was going up a cent or two cents a litre every day."
Prior to COVID Mr Tedesco said fuel prices were steady, before they started to quickly increase.
"COVID was when the prices really started to increase and they've continued to stay up," he said.
"We're told the price rise is because of demand and oversees influences and the war in Ukraine, but we don't really know.
"Whether the prices will change only time will tell, but in the short term we would assume the prices aren't going down and they'll still be going up."
As president of the LRTSA association Mr Tedesco said they did discuss high fuel prices, but ultimately it was out of their hands.
"We would love to influence the market, but we don't have the power to do it," he said.
"It goes back to relying on overseas imports to run the country, whether in previous years we were self-sufficient."
The freezing of the fuel excise last year in the lead-up to the federal election helped decrease the cost of fuel, but also had an adverse affect Mr Tedesco said.
"As an adverse affect of that, they froze the fuel tax credit for six months, which meant transport operators needed more money to run their business," he said.
"For every litre of fuel a transport operator buys they get a rebate from the government and that goes towards paying their tax debt."
Mr Tedesco said this fuel tax credit freeze affected a lot of businesses.
"For example if someone had a $30,000 tax debt at the quarter, $20,000 of that was from their fuel tax credit - the fuel tax credit took $20,000 off the $30,000 debt, so effectively people only had to pay $10,000," he said.
"When they paid that fuel tax credit for the six months, people had to pay the full amount, which meant instead of having to pay $10,000 people had to pay $30,000.
"I know for a fact that hurt a lot of businesses and by stop putting the fuel excise for six months, it didn't really achieve anything, it didn't really affect the price of fuel because it still went up."
While the fuel excise did pose a challenge, Mr Tedesco said he was not sure getting rid of it would be beneficial, as it was dedicated to help fund road projects and without it they would not happen.
Australian Trucking Association chair David Smith said for any truck drivers in regional and rural Australia, fuel is their biggest single cost.
"Any variation in the fuel when it rises has an immediate impact on businesses," he said.
"Anyone not using a fuel levy, they must be doing it awfully hard, as nothing can keep up with the rise in prices in the last couple of weeks.
"The current fuel levy is the highest I've ever seen and that's scary."
The high fuel levy would have a direct impact on the cost of living in rural and regional Australia, Mr Smith said.
"Whether that be carting sheep through to Murray Bridge or groceries the cost is going up," he said.
"In the transport world we obviously have to pass it on or we go broke, so it sort of sits in the end with the customer who ends up holding the bundle."
Mr Smith said he can safely assume fuel prices will not change in the immediate future.
"It's totally beyond our control, with the Ukraine war and a whole host of factors impacting on fuel prices," he said.
"We're not in a very good space right now, the Australian dollar is down, we've got a war going on and we've come out of COVID and work has increased and we're going into the European winter.
"There's a stack of factors against us."
Mr Smith said the fuel excise is effectively a tax, that he hoped would lead to the development of roads and infrastructure.
"We get a fuel tax credit that we claim back on our BAS, which we can do monthly or quarterly and then that is offset in the BAS," he said.
"Whatever that credit number is people get that back when they do their BAS and that's their final payment.
"Diesel gets paid up front when people purchase it and the theory is it's effectively a tax and I'd like to think it goes back into roads and infrastructure."
While there was some caution from people transporting goods and services, with trucks, Mr Smith said there was a still a strong need for truck transportation.
"Prices of sheep has gone down, so freight prices are going up and price of people's products are going down," he said.
"With harvest it's very hard to price, because people don't know what fuel prices are going to do and it's the biggest single cost and a real dilemma.
"Ultimately though there's nothing we consume that doesn't go on a truck."
