In Alpharetta, fish come off the truck at the Whole Foods distribution center and the company's regional seafood buyer, John Bowler, worries that he won't be able to charge shoppers enough to make a profit.

Up near Gainesville, Robert Howard tracks his 150 trucks as they carry and deliver food around the country and he worries whether he can boost his own prices enough to pay for diesel.

Alexander Acosta/AJC (ENLARGE)

Even with higher seafood prices in stores such as Whole Foods, only some of the extra costs have been passed on to consumers. Each link in the supply chain is afraid to raise prices too much.

Alexander Acosta/AJC (ENLARGE)

Vince Reyes replenishes the stock of scallops at the Whole Foods off Ponce de Leon in Atlanta. Like many other stores, this one has seen the effects of skyrocketing fuel prices that have devastated the profit margins of fishermen and shrimpers — as well as truckers.

FOOD PRICES: A LOCAL LOOK Higher milk prices don't mean more profits for farmers Tough times chip away at snack sales Deals at Whole Foods? Tour shows you where | Photos Diesel spike means rough times for seafood prices Restaurants feel squeeze from both ends of economy Economic toll nips at scotch buyers, too Beer prices rising | Photos Egg price reflects soaring costs for diesel, feed | Photos Groups that feed families on edge are pushed to limit Poor not only ones feeling pressure This is an occasional series on how rising global food prices are affecting people and businesses in metro Atlanta.

Down in Panama City, Greg Abrams is taking fish from about 30 boats run by his seafood company, toting up a bill for fuel that increasingly washes away his earnings.

"Diesel fell to $3.91 last Friday and we got excited, but now it's back to $4.43," he said last week. "There is no stability. It just makes your margins so unpredictable."

Even a decent haul of fish can mean a loss, once fuel is paid for and the crew gets its share. Raising the price of the fish barely softens the blow. Even a 29 percent boost falls short of the spike in fuel prices.

Last year, Abrams was selling red snapper for $4.25 a pound. Now, he gets $5.50 a pound. "That is not even coming close to our costs, but you can't keep on (raising prices) because people will just eat something else."

He paused. "We need to be getting $6 a pound for that snapper."

From docks to highway to store — each link in the chain means a mark-up in the product's price. Yet the increase is still far short of the price hikes in fuel.

So consumers see higher prices even while some of the people who bring them the food are going out of business. And that will only mean still-higher prices.

Shrimp comes from a shrinking fleet, Abrams said. "There were 450 boats dragging the Gulf a year ago. There are 58 now."

Fishing for profits

The fewer the boats, the fewer fish there are for the market and the higher the prices, said Hal Ambos, whose family has been in fishing for five generations.

As president of Savannah-based Ambos Seafoods Inc., a $15 million-a-year sales and marketing company, he is increasingly worried that supplies are undependable.

"We don't even know if the guys are even going to go out," he said. "It is simply because the fuel costs are rising and the value of the shrimp is not keeping up."

Fuel costs are roughly 85 percent higher than a year ago, he said.

That means that a typical shrimper, a boat of about 80 feet using upward of 300 gallons of fuel a day, will cost more than $1,300 to operate.

Back on the docks, the going price for the shrimp is $5.70 per pound, Ambos said: A boat that returns with 300 pounds of shrimp gets $1,710. Because the crew generally takes 35 percent off the top, the owner is left with $1,100.

"The owner just lost money," Ambos said.

Cold, hard math

On the roads, there is a similar subtraction.

About 935 trucking companies went out of business in the first months of this year, idling 42,000 trucks, according to a recent report by Nashville-based analyst Donald Broughton.

Thinning the ranks will give more power to those that are left, said Howard, owner and president of $35 million-a-year RWH Trucking in Oakwood.

Nearly all of his cargo is food — including Pilgrims Pride, the nation's largest poultry company, Wrigley Co., Hershey Foods Corp. and Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, which includes Edy's, Haagen-Dazs and Nestle brands.

Diesel drives the trucks, and the price of diesel has climbed $1.89 cents a gallon in the past 12 months, according to the Energy Information Administration.

That outpaces revenues — even with the surcharges Howard has added.

It's not just engine fuel. A lot of what is transported — like fish and ice cream and meat — needs refrigeration.

In May 2007, RWH bought fuel at an average of $2.71 a gallon. The company that month spent $748,000 on diesel for the engines and $61,000 to fuel refrigeration units.

This May, fuel had spiked to an average of $4.38 a gallon. Howard spent $1.12 million to run the trucks and $105,000 for their cooling units.

In May, his income fell $225,000 short of his costs — even after fuel surcharges.

"That is a dead loss," Howard said. "That is money I am losing every month. I can't keep absorbing $200,000 losses. The cash flow part is just horrendous."

Howard has raised fuel surcharges 67 percent in the past year. "That is still nowhere near the increase in costs."

Howard would like to raise his surcharges more than he has, but he fears what would happen if he does. Whenever he pushes too hard, the big food companies balk, threatening to take their business elsewhere. Still, the more competitors who go out of business, the stronger his hand.

"Eventually there will be an extreme shortage of trucks available," he said. "And then we'll be able to name our price."

That means continued pressure to push prices up all along the supply chain to the consumer.

Of course, fuel is not the only rising cost, just the one with the highest profile and the broadest reach. Prices of food commodities have been climbing all by themselves.

But food climbed 46 percent in the 12 months ending in April, while oil prices jumped 68 percent in that same period — and has climbed even faster since, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Many experts have shaken their heads in dismay and pronounced oil "a bubble," with prices lifted more by speculation than the fundamentals of supply and demand.

Only they have been saying so since 2004 while oil prices just kept climbing.

Only so many options

All along the food chain are companies that have been squeezed between the rise of costs and the need to hold their prices down, said Dexter Manning, head of the national food and beverage group for tax and business consultant Grant Thornton.

"The environment is still competitive, so they are forced to take lower margins. And some of these producers are losing money right now."

Perhaps only one-third of the price hikes have reached consumers, he said. "We haven't seen the full impact yet."

The impact so far has left Atlanta-area markets scrambling to find ways to manage higher costs of all kinds: they try to become more efficient and they accept smaller profit margins.

And sometimes they raise their prices.

"Fuel costs are directly associated with our ability to go to market," said Brenda Reid, spokeswoman for Publix, which has 155 stores in metro Atlanta. "That doesn't mean that every time that prices go up, that we go up, too. Only after we have absorbed it as long as we could."

Bowler, the seafood buyer for the 18 Whole Foods stores in the Southeast, knows that truckers may not be passing through all their costs. But what they do pass along hurts badly enough.

Last week, a truck arrived from Boston with nearly 5,000 pounds of fish and a $350 fuel surcharge. Bowler was hesitant to challenge the trucking company.

"I want to make sure I get the product, and I don't want to burn any bridges," he said. "If that surcharge gets up to $500 to $600 per truck, I'll reach out and have a discussion."

At the end of the pipeline are consumers. And the store is depending on him and her at a time when the economy is shaky and many Americans are looking for ways to trim their spending.

As food prices climb, the first impulse is to swallow hard and take it.

"It's a struggle," Bowler said. "This comes off my profit margin in the end. I am certainly not making the margin that I need to make."

Wholesale seafood prices per pound (representative amount)

• Source: John Sackton for Urner Barry Publications, Inc., publisher of Seafood Price Current