No holiday at pump
Gas costs 30 to 40 cents more than last year.
Last year’s Thanksgiving Day trip to Grandma’s house was fueled by gas prices so cheap, most families could afford to bring an extra pie.
This year, it’s the oil barons who can buy all the pies.
Sorry, Grandma. You’re also stuck baking the holiday pies this year because crude oil prices on the global market are keeping gas prices 30- to 40-cents-a-gallon higher than the Thanksgiving weekend of 2016.
In Florida, the average pump price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline on Monday was $2.49. Ayear ago, it was $2.11 — 38 cents cheaper.
The silver lining is the average price is resuming its slow, lazy drift lower — a penny here, a penny there, maybe a nickel over a few days. Florida’s average price on Monday was four cents cheaper than aweek earlier.
Plus, Florida’s average gas price was a nickel less than the national average of $2.54, but significantly higher than neighboring Southern states including Georgia [$2.39] and Alabama [$2.25].
A further downward drift should continue through the weekend, thanks to increased oil production boosting U.S. gas and oil inventories, travel club AAA said in its weekly gas price update.
“Gas prices should decline five to 10 cents through Thanksgiving weekend,” AAA spokesman Mark Jenkins said. “Although gasoline demand will be high this week, it will be cheaper for gas stations to purchase their fuel than a week ago. Since retailers profit more off of concessions in their convenience stores than the sale of gasoline, they will be more likely to lower gas prices as away to attract passing motorists.”
Where and when should you look for these lower prices?
Jenkins said gas stations often wait until Friday to lower their prices. And you might need to leave the highway and drive into areas with multiple stations close to each other, where competing stations often use lower prices to lure in locals to buy higher-profit convenience store items like coffee, beer, lottery tickets, tobacco products and meat sticks.
Highest gas prices tend to be in rural areas, along highways and near airports, Jenkins said.
Of course, the South Florida metro area is a hodgepodge of all
those kinds of places and so gas prices here tend to vary widely. Theaverage per-gallon prices in the tricounty region on Monday were $2.53 in Broward County, $2.58 in Miami-Dade County and $2.60 in Palm Beach County.
But while South Florida prices tend to run higher than the rest of the state, the wide spread between the highest and lower prices tend to make average prices look higher than most motorists might guess.
According to the pricecomparison website GasBuddy.com, the lowest price available in Palm Beach County without joining a discount club was $2.35 at four stations in LakeWorth — Wawa, RaceTrac and Speedway at the intersection of Lake Worth Road and South CongressAvenue and Valero at 10th Avenue North and Kirk Road. The same price could be found farther east inPalm Springs, atMurphy USA on 10th Avenue North near South Congress Avenue.
Alternatively, you could’ve spent $3.39 at 7-Eleven at the intersection of JogRoad andWest Boynton Beach Boulevard in Boynton Beach.
Miami Gardenswas your go-to place for MiamiDade’s lowest prices — $2.35 at Marathon and two U-Gas stations, all on South State Road 7 [U.S. 441] between Northwest 199th Street and Northeast 191st Street.
If you prefer to pay higher prices, you could have headed east to Miami Beach and chosen from six stations charging $3.19 or more.
And it looks like $2.35 was the cheapest price Broward County motorists were able to findMonday— at U-Gas on East Commercial Boulevard and South Dixie Highway in Fort Lauderdale.
The highest price in Broward was $2.99 at Chevron at Powerline and Hammondville roads in Pompano Beach.