You Just Paid the Most for Memorial Day Gas in Four Years, and It's About to Get Worse

Memorial Day 2026 gas prices just rewrote the holiday record book, and not in a good way. The national average hit $4.56 a gallon over the weekend, which is the most expensive Memorial Day at the pump in four years. If you filled up on the way to the lake or your cousin's barbecue, you paid about $1.38 more per gallon than you did last year. That hurts even before you get to the burgers.

And here's the worst part. The summer hasn't really started yet.

Patrick De Haan over at GasBuddy is calling this the most volatile summer at the pump in years, and the projections back him up. Gas is expected to average $4.80 a gallon between now and Labor Day, with a real chance of testing the all-time record of $5.02 if things get worse in the Middle East.

The thing pushing this is the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil flows through that narrow waterway, and with the Iran conflict bringing tanker traffic to a near standstill, the supply side is squeezed harder than it has been in years. Refineries can only do so much when the crude isn't moving. Every week the strait stays jammed, the pump number climbs a little more.

You'd think record prices would chase people off the road, but they didn't. AAA tracked 45 million Americans traveling at least 50 miles over the holiday weekend, the highest count ever recorded. 87% of them drove. The honest read on that is most people just decided high gas was the price of admission for the first real weekend of summer.

So what actually helps?

A lot of "gas saving" gadgets and additives floating around online don't do anything. The little magnets you clip to your fuel line, the pills you drop in your tank, the air-intake gizmos sold on social media, save your money. Independent testing has rinsed these claims for years.

Boring stuff works instead. Tire pressure is the easiest free MPG you can get. Underinflated tires can cut fuel economy by 3 to 5 percent, and most people are driving on at least one soft tire without realizing it. Check it cold, first thing in the morning, before the sun warms the pavement.

After that, lighten up. The roof rack from your ski trip is still up there, the cargo box is still empty, and both are pulling 2 to 5 MPG off you at highway speed. Take them down when you're not using them. Same goes for that toolbox or cooler living in the trunk year-round.

Driving style is the biggest one and the hardest one to actually change. Aggressive acceleration and hard braking can drop highway mileage 15 to 30 percent. Cruise control on flat stretches helps. So does anticipating stops so you can coast instead of stomping the brake.

If you've got a flexible commute, even a small shift away from peak traffic saves real money. Idling burns roughly a quarter gallon an hour. Five minutes here and there at lights adds up across a week.

And before your next road trip, just shop around. GasBuddy and Waze both show real-time prices, and the spread between the cheapest and most expensive station in the same zip code can be 30 cents a gallon or more.

The summer is going to be what it's going to be. The Strait of Hormuz isn't reopening on your schedule, and neither is OPEC. But you can shave 10 to 15 percent off your fuel bill just by getting your tire pressure right, cleaning out the trunk, and easing off the throttle. That's not nothing when you're staring down a $4.80 average for the next three months.