National gas prices hit record highs; local prices not far behind

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Gas prices in Kentucky are not rising as high as in some parts of the country. However, the price of gas is still going up so fast that consumers are finding it hard to adjust.

“I mean, it hurts,” Jack Smitha said as he pumped gas at $4.29 per gallon into his company’s pickup truck. “I’ve got a diesel. Diesel’s been four dollars a gallon for quite a while. And now that it’s going higher, it kills you.”

Similar thoughts were expressed by other motorists struggling to make ends meet.

“You’ve got to cut out what you can in order to afford more gas,” Steven Williams said, “because you don’t get increased pay considering gas is going up. So, all the fun stuff, all the activities, all the joy riding, you got to really pretty much limit it to back and forth to work and the grocery store.”

According to AAA, the average national price for gas hit a record high Tuesday morning at $4.17 a gallon. That’s up 55 cents from last week and up 63 cents since the day Russia invaded Ukraine.

Closer to home, the GasBuddy app recorded most Metro prices Tuesday morning topping out around $4.25.

The cheapest was $3.89 at a gas station in the Russell neighborhood. But that price jumped 30 cents to $4.09 by noon.

“We’re already at $5 a gallon in some parts of the country, and that happened very, very quickly,” Lynda Lambert, AAA East Central safety advisor said. “We are seeing record breaking prices in states like Pennsylvania. They had already broken their state record over this past weekend. And we are not far from ours both in the Commonwealth and in the city of Louisville.”

Copyright 2022 WAVE. All rights reserved.