The $4 Labor Day: Why Sun Belt Families Are Feeling the Gas-Price Surge So Differently

Gasoline is back above $4 nationally, but the price shock looks very different depending on where in the Sun Belt you live.

The national average for regular gasoline reached $4.15 a gallon Friday, up from $3.19 a year ago, according to AAA. Texas drivers were paying about $3.69, while Georgia and Florida were near $4. In Arizona, the average was $4.53. Nevada was approaching $5.

For a region built around highways, distant suburbs and two-car households, those increases reach well beyond the Labor Day road trip. They raise the everyday cost of living in places where work, school, shopping and children’s activities can routinely require dozens of miles of driving.

And in much of the Sun Belt, gasoline is now roughly a dollar a gallon more expensive than it was a year ago.

What an extra dollar a gallon costs

Texas regular gasoline averaged $3.69 Friday, compared with $2.78 a year earlier. Florida climbed from $3.14 to $3.95, while Georgia rose from $2.92 to $3.90.

Arizona went from $3.49 to $4.53. Nevada was near $4.91 Thursday, compared with $3.83 a year earlier.

Consider a two-car household driving a combined 24,000 miles a year in vehicles averaging 25 miles per gallon. That household uses about 80 gallons of gasoline a month.

At Friday’s Texas average, that works out to about $295 a month. At Arizona’s average, roughly $362. In Nevada, it approaches $393.

Compared with a year ago, the same household could now be spending roughly $65 to $85 more every month on gasoline.

That is not a hypothetical vacation expense. It is the cost of getting to work Monday morning, taking children to practice Wednesday evening and making another trip to the supermarket Saturday.

The Sun Belt was built for driving

This is where a national gasoline-price story becomes particularly relevant to the South and Southwest.

Much of the Sun Belt’s growth has occurred beyond traditional urban cores. New subdivisions, schools, offices, shopping districts and medical campuses have spread along interstate corridors and suburban highways from North Texas to Central Florida, metro Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Families have often traded proximity for space: a larger house, a newer subdivision, a better school district or a lower purchase price farther from a major employment center.

The tradeoff is mileage.

A household may live in one suburb, work in another, send children to school several miles away and shop in a third commercial district. Public transportation is not a practical alternative for many of those trips.

When gasoline is relatively inexpensive, the additional miles can blend into the household budget. A rise of roughly $1 a gallon makes them much harder to ignore.

Why the West is paying more

Even within the Sun Belt, location makes an enormous difference.

Texas and the Gulf Coast sit close to some of the nation’s largest concentrations of petroleum production and refining, helping keep gasoline relatively inexpensive.

Western markets are more isolated. Arizona receives fuel through pipelines connected to California and Texas, while Nevada depends heavily on supplies moving from California and other Western refining centers. Taxes, fuel requirements, transportation costs and local competition add to the differences.

The result this weekend is a gap of more than $1.20 a gallon between Texas and Nevada.

A 15-gallon fill-up costs about $55 at the Texas average. In Arizona it is about $68. In Nevada, it is roughly $74.

For a household filling two vehicles several times a month, that geographic difference becomes substantial.

Why gasoline jumped

The latest increase begins thousands of miles from the suburban neighborhoods feeling it.

Oil prices have risen sharply amid instability affecting the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important petroleum-shipping routes. Higher crude prices eventually feed into gasoline prices, although refining, distribution, taxes and local market conditions determine what drivers ultimately pay.

AAA cited elevated crude prices when it warned that this Labor Day was likely to set a record at the pump.

The timing is notable because gasoline typically begins getting cheaper as summer travel winds down and refiners prepare to switch to less expensive winter blends.

That relief has not yet arrived.

The hidden price of distance

For years, part of the Sun Belt’s appeal was a simple financial bargain: families could get more house and more land for their money if they were willing to live farther out.

That bargain still exists in many places, but its arithmetic has changed.

Home prices have climbed across many fast-growing Sun Belt suburbs. Insurance has become considerably more expensive in some states. Electricity bills can swell during long summers.

Now the cost of distance is rising again.

A family does not have to cancel a Labor Day trip to be affected by $4 gasoline. For millions of Sun Belt households, driving is not discretionary spending.

The price of the house may be fixed.

The price of living 25 miles from work is paid every week.

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About the Author

Tsvi Jolles

Author, Editor & Publisher

Tsvi Jolles is the author of seven books and the founder and publisher of North Atlanta Star. He has lived in Cumming for almost a decade.

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