I was shocked yesterday when I pulled up to the gas pump at the gas station. $3.37 a gallon for premium unleaded. The customer before me had $70 dollars worth of regular unleaded at $3.17 a gallon.
Gasbuddy has a national map of average gasoline prices. It's interesting to note the deep red areas seem to be primarily isolated to the coasts, and the green areas are all around Montana, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. You can zoom in and get more detail on the price of gasoline in that area.
According to the recent story on CNN drivers in Southern California are deliberately running out of gas on the freeways and waiting for rescue to arrive.
Lujan's 20 trucks roam the busy freeways of Orange and Los Angeles counties as part of a publicly funded patrol that gives a free gallon of gas to drivers who have run out of fuel. It also offers other basic assistance to drivers whose vehicles have broken down.
"You say to some of them 'hey, you've run out of gas' and they say 'yeah, it's too expensive.' I think the percentage is going to increase," Lujan said.
Moshe Ben Dayan, whose TipTopTow company performs a similar service in Los Angeles' affluent west side, said some people were taking advantage of the freeway service patrol.
"There was one guy a while back who was stopping every morning and trying to get his one free gallon," said Dayan. "I think it is going to be more drastic when the price of gas is closer to $4 a gallon."
I wonder how long the patrol takes to arrive; even if you're making, say, $8 an hour, if you wait half an hour for your gas, that makes no sense. I don't see that many people making that calculation on purpose anyway -- I suspect it just sounds good for the CNN story.
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