The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline just hit an all-time high of $4.10 according to GasBuddy.com. We haven't seen gas prices like this in 14 years.
Everyone is feeling the pain at the pump in one way or another.
"As a business, it's getting harder and harder for a trucking business to stay alive," said truck owner and operator Hector Escobedo who travels hundreds of miles a day across North Texas.
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Mobile licensed massage therapist Lauren Martin, owner of Much Kneaded Recovery, is in need of relief herself.
"I travel all the way up to like Grapevine, Southlake, TCU, kind of all over the area in the Metroplex. So it's definitely getting me as far as the gas prices go," Martin said. "I'm having to go into looking into getting into like a salon suite, a few days a week, just because I can't afford five, six days a week to travel to client, to client, because of the gas prices, I just can't."
Economist Timothy Snyder of Matador Economics says the dramatic spike is a result of a culmination of events but above all, a stalled U.S. fossil fuel industry.
"A surgeon doesn't go into the operating room and cut out somebody's heart without having a heart ready on the table ready to go back in. That's what they're doing, we don't have the infrastructure ready to handle the electric, so we've got to go back in and rebuild where we are in fossil fuels."
In the meantime, he offers this advice to make the gas you have go the extra mile:
- Carpool when possible
- Don't leave your car idling
- Don't wait until your tank is on empty to fill up
"I usually let my gas tank get down to a quarter tank, I'm now filling my tank at a half," said Snyder. "It's not quite the same impact on my pocketbook in my mind. But it also lets me dollar-cost-average the price of gasoline that I'm paying."
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Snyder says he wouldn't be surprised to hear people put the brakes on spring break plans.
"People are going to have to start looking at paring back some of their plans, their driving plans, that they might have had because that's where we are in the economy."
