A short-lived price war in Houghton Lake, Mich., last week resulted in gasoline prices way below $1 a gallon, and while such events may occur again, most U.S. drivers won’t see anything like those prices. Instead, a better course of action may be to buy gasoline from a dealer with consistently low prices.
To make that hunt a little easier, GasBuddy has combed through its data and named the low-price leaders in six categories: overall; extra large (more than 1,000 U.S. locations); large (100 to 999 locations); medium (50 to 99 locations); small (25 to 49 stores); and extra small (fewer than 25 stores). Researchers poured over 657 million individual price submissions and compared each brand’s pump price (by zip code) to the average price of local competitors.
The overall winner was Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST), also the winner in the large category. Gasoline on any given day at a Costco store was priced more than 19.8 cents per gallon lower than its competitors. Costco was the lowest-priced brand in 12 states.
In the extra-large category, Arco-branded stations (mostly in the Western states) charged prices that averaged 17.6 cents per gallon lower than competitors.
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Northern California’s Quik Stop stations led the medium-size category, with prices that averaged 17.8 cents a gallon lower than competitor pricing.
Another California chain, Rotten Robbie, led in the small category with prices averaging 13.7 cents a gallon below competitors’ prices, and Southern California warehouse food chain Food 4 Less led in the extra-small category with prices averaging 18.8 cents a gallon below competitor prices.
A full list of the cheapest gasoline in each of the 50 states is available at GasBuddy.
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