Gas prices are through the roof nowadays, and people across the U.S. are taking various measures to save money on it. This includes using the long gas lines at Costco and Sam’s Club, downloading the GasBuddy mobile app to scout for the cheapest gas and tapping fuel rewards programs.
A USA Today report shared accounts of several individuals going into great lengths to save up on gas. Krystal Goodner, 44, a content creator and freelance media professional had always been conscious of gas prices, having downsized to a midsize Infiniti sedan to conserve fuel back in 2020. “I couldn’t imagine paying more than that right now,” said Goodner, who lives in Jefferson, Indiana, on a tight budget.
With the recent massive jump in gas prices, Goodner started using GasBuddy, a mobile app that allows users to look for the lowest gas prices. GasBuddy said downloads have dramatically increased since February and that daily app use has increased by nearly a third since the Iran war broke out.
READ: How the 2026 Iran war is driving up oil and gas prices (March 16, 2026)
“It’s just a silent storm brewing for a lot of people with the health insurance stuff then the grocery prices and now this,” Goodner said. “It’s just another thing making our lives a lot harder right now.”
Shawn Carey, 60, an operations manager at a corporate event company and a wildlife photographer said he regularly drives 3 miles out of his way to shave 10 to 15 cents − and sometimes more − off a gallon. He recently had to pay $3.45 a gallon to fill up his Subaru Outback. Three weeks earlier at the same gas station, the cheapest near his home in Braintree, Massachusetts, he paid $2.49 a gallon.
“Even in my office, people are talking about it now,” Carey said. “A lot of the younger guys have a couple of kids, a mortgage payment, a car payment and that’s one of the things they talk about, how it’s eating into their salary every week.”
Of course, it is not only people in the U.S. needing to resort to various measures to save on gas. James McCabe, a 46-year-old loader operator from Edmonton, Canada, owns five older vehicles, including a gas-guzzling 2010 Toyota Tundra, but drives a subcompact to the construction site each workday because of its fuel efficiency.
READ: India faces energy risks as Hormuz closure disrupts global oil flows (
About 10 years ago he bought two slip tanks – one 90-gallon portable gas container for the back of one of his trucks and one 40-gallon container that he keeps in his backyard – so he can opportunistically stock up on gas when it’s cheaper and ride out the stressful periods when prices surge. He uses the GasBuddy app to hunt for the cheapest gas prices, and fills up twice using the slip tanks to have enough fuel to last three months behind the wheel of his 2003 Toyota Echo.
“It’s a definite savings,” McCabe told the USA Today.
The rise in gas prices has come as a result of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which began with strikes on the Middle Eastern country on Feb 28. The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most crucial oil transit chokepoints, remains a focal point of the conflict. Attacks and retaliatory strikes have disrupted normal tanker traffic through the waterway, which typically carries roughly 20 % of global oil and LNG supplies. This has compounded market anxiety and propelled benchmark prices higher.
This comes as especially ironic since before the war, Donald Trump bragged about low gas prices. With the war entering its fourth week, the price of crude oil has shot up with the near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz.