At Houston’s Hot Shot Delivery, the ceiling lights look like a chequerboard, with every other one switched off. Every discardable document is either glue-bound, with the blank side up, into an office notepad or – if both sides have been used – taken to the recycling centre for cash to go into the Christmas party fund. Drivers are not permitted to waste fuel idling at the loading dock.

Eric Donaldson is president of Hot Shot, the same-day delivery and storage company that is his family’s business. He is doing everything he can to keep costs down as rising gasoline and utility prices cut into his margins. Besides installing lights that turn off when staff leave a room, that includes putting off capital investments in electronic equipment and cutting administrative time and the petrol needed to ferry signature forms back to the Houston office.