Tales from the Pump

High gas prices are keenly felt in Connecticut, where drivers fill up on some of the nation's most expensive fuel and share stories of how they cope

by Tim Catts

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BW.com reader Jeremy Victor gave us the idea for "Tales from the Pump." A married father of two children living in suburban Bucks County, Pa., he works as an operations executive in the publishing industry.

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Watch the Video…

It's a sunny Friday afternoon in Bridgeport, Conn., and drivers are feeling the pain as they pull in to the Freedom Premium Fuels service station. Nate Carter, a polished young salesman for the Cumulus Media (CMLS) radio network, watches the gas pump tick past $60 and then $65 as he fills up his car. "I'm probably going to sell it within a month," he says, nodding to the sleek, silver Nissan 350Z. He loves the car, but he's going to trade it in for a more fuel-efficient Nissan (NSANY) Altima to save on gas expenses. "It's not worth paying the extra money," he says. "It becomes a luxury at a certain point."

Such is life at the pump these days. As gas prices surge ever higher, Americans who long resisted cutting back are beginning to find that they have to. Bridgeport may be the best vantage point for seeing how rising fuel prices are changing the lives of people buffeted by a soft economy, weak job market, and a housing slump. At the time of Carter's visit, the Connecticut town held the distinction of having the highest average gas price in the country, according to the Web site Gasbuddy.com. The site, which compiles information from users to steer drivers toward the cheapest fuel, put the average price in Bridgeport for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline at more than $4.29.

Bridgeport's Claim to Fame

Every driver has a tale to tell about the effect of rising fuel costs. Some stories are of minor changes in daily patterns; others are more substantial. Mark Zoom, a bearded bear of a man who works as a mason, only puts $25 into his truck at a time, and gasses up more often. Bridgeport resident Sam Larkin says he travels less often, and takes the train or bus when he goes to places like New Hampshire. A Honda (HMC) CR-V driver who identifies himself only as Richard says he's divorced and can't afford to visit his kids as frequently as he would like. "I've got a bad heart, a tumor inside," he says. "I've got to save money to go to the doctor."

Perhaps only extreme circumstances could turn a service station emblazoned with red, white, and blue stripes into a confessional. Over the past year, gas prices around the country have exploded. The primary reason is an immense runup in crude oil prices, which have climbed from an average of $64.20 a barrel last year to more than $130 a barrel in recent weeks. That's helped push prices at Freedom Premium Fuels to $4.319 for a gallon of regular unleaded gas, slightly above the city's average.

To be sure, it's not the most expensive gas in the area. A Mobil (XOM) station in nearby Westport charges $4.66. As high as that is, there are stations around the country that charge more. Jason Toews, Gasbuddy.com's co-founder, points to a station on Beaver Island, a 13-mile-long island in Lake Michigan, where one of the site's members spotted a gallon of regular unleaded at $5.19 last week. And there are isolated stations from Florida to Alaska and Hawaii that charge more. (Tucson, at $3.696 a gallon, is the city with the lowest average gas price, about 14% lower than Bridgeport.) But in the Lower 48, no state's residents face higher prices than Connecticut's, and no one in the Nutmeg State pays more on average than drivers in Bridgeport.

Cutting Back

There are seasonal factors, too: Gas prices tend to climb during the summer, when millions of drivers hit the road on vacation. In total, Connecticut drivers pay the second-highest gasoline tax in the country at 62.5¢ a gallon, trailing only California. The national average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline on June 2 was $3.976, up 4% from the previous week and some 82% from a year earlier, the federal Energy Information Administration reported.

The rapid ascent of gas prices comes at a time when the economy is already precariously close to recession.