Be ready to pay more for your bread, your milk, your vehicle - in fact, be prepared to pay more for just about everything that has been freighted to wherever you buy it.
The emissions trading scheme will make everything from diesel to tyres, truck blinds to the trucks themselves more expensive, and those costs will have to be recouped.
Dunedin transport operator Peter Sutherland said most companies had a formula to pass on fluctuating diesel costs to consumers and that the formula would be adjusted to meet the ETS.
But fuel - to rise by 3c a litre today - was only part of the equation. Like everyone else, freight companies would have to pay more for anything that generates carbon.
It would ultimately lead to consumers paying more for what they buy as the likes of dairies, supermarkets and anyone who sells goods find ways to offset transport costs.
Trucking companies were still coming to terms with the potential, but still hard to quantify, cost of doing business under the ETS. Many were still focused on surviving the tail-end of the recession, he said.
Theirs was a competitive industry so it might be difficult to pass on all the additional costs passed to them by their own suppliers.
Some businesses might struggle with fixed contracts, or from declining business as customers ere affected by the ETS.
"Let's say people will pay more for their loaf of bread. They'll already pay more because that bread might be produced using electricity that now costs more.
"Transport will have to be factored in, too. They might all be only small costs, but they will all have to be tallied up."
