SPRING LAKE, Mich. — The price of gas is nearly rising to record highs in Michigan. It's $4.25 at many stations in our state, while the all-time high is $4.26, set in 2011.
The national average reached a record high Monday at $4.10 per gallon, and oil prices are at their highest since 2008.
"It's a huge shock for people," said a Nunica woman buying gas at a Wesco in Fruitport Monday afternoon. "It becomes 'do you want to eat or do you want to put gas in your car?'"
As the prices nears a record along the lakeshore, drivers explain how it's become a strain on their lives.
"They're high, and we just keep watching it go up and up and up," said Aleesha Wahr, the Assistant Manager of Wesco Spring Lake, located right off of M-104.
Wahr has worked at Wesco for more than seven years, and said she can't remember the last time gas was this expensive.
"People just seem like they're sick of it," she said. "They don't want to go anywhere, and they want to use their cars instead of driving their trucks."
And for gas station employees like Wahr and her team at Wesco, they want people to understand that they have nothing to do with the prices, and they do what they can to help customers, like offer reward programs.
"The only other way I can think of helping is by making sure that we, as employees, are not having a bad attitude about it," Wahr said, "but we're just as frustrated as everybody else is."
Teresa Morales stopped to get gas at the Spring Lake Wesco Monday afternoon and said she couldn't believe how expensive it had gotten.
"It really affects peoples' pocketbooks, so everybody's got to put out a lot more money, and now that some folks are getting back to work, they're driving again," Morales said, "but how are they going to get to work if they can't afford the gas?"
Morales said she's heard people worry about getting their kids to sports practices, activities and even to places like daycare.
"There's a lot more than just driving to work," she said.
This is a sentiment Nunica resident Patrick LaPorte agrees with. He spent nearly $100 at the Fruitport Wesco on Monday just to fill up his truck to get to work.
"This rise in prices is going to affect everybody," he said. "It's going to affect our children and the way they grow up."
LaPorte said that's his biggest worry with how expensive gas has gotten.
"We're not only hurting ourselves and our pocketbooks," he said, "we're hurting our future, and our future generations to come."
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