May 22, 2026
The last time AAA’s pump map turned this color was Memorial Day 2022. That peak hit $4.61 a gallon nationally on June 14, 2022, and stayed in the $4-plus range across all 50 states for about ten days before easing back. Thursday’s reading, reported in AAA’s Memorial Day weekend release, put the national average at $4.56 and every state above $4. The previous benchmark held for four years. This one took two days.
The Florida data is the part that says this cycle is different. Glades County hit $4.50 on Wednesday. Miami-Dade is at $4.37, Orange County $4.16, and Escambia $4.05. The state low and state high are 45 cents apart, the widest intra-state spread in any major US state this year. More telling: Florida’s average has stayed above $4 for 50 straight days, longer than the entire 2022 Russia-Ukraine pump cycle managed. Florida sat at $2.98 on February 28, before the Hormuz closure. Twelve weeks later it’s added $1.50 and counting.
GasBuddy formalized the summer view Wednesday. Patrick De Haan and the team put the national summer 2026 average at $4.80 a gallon between Memorial Day and Labor Day, against $3.14 last summer. That’s a 42.7% increase year-over-year. The summer ceiling, in their modeling, is $5.02 if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed into late August. The prior summer record was $4.43 in 2022. The GasBuddy summer call gives the auto industry its sharpest 90-day picture since the Iran war began.
Hawaii is the early-warning state. Its average sits at $6.14, the highest in the country and the leading indicator for the lower 48. Hawaii imports nearly all of its refined product on tanker schedules that run two to three weeks, which makes its pump prices reflect crude pricing roughly 30 days closer to real-time than mainland averages. Whatever Hawaii is doing in May tends to show up in Texas and California a month later. Texas hit a fresh four-year high this week despite being the largest crude producer in the country. The state-level disconnect is the structural piece. Crude is local. Pump price is not.
The pump-anchor-to-crude lag is the variable everyone is watching. Brent dropped 5.16% in a single Wednesday session to $105.54 on Iran-deal-hope sentiment, and three supertankers crossed Hormuz the same day per satellite data. Pump prices didn’t move. The physical pipeline from Persian Gulf liftings to a US retail station runs about 60 days, which means the gas in your tank this week reflects mid-March crude pricing. Even if Trump and Tehran shook hands tomorrow, the late-June reads would still carry the May Hormuz transit costs. AAA’s previous coverage of the April $4 crossing tracked the same lag from the other direction.
Cox Automotive’s Auto Market Weekly Summary, published the week of May 18, flagged the conversation no one in the industry wants to have out loud. The team warned consumer resilience may not survive sustained energy prices through summer. Core retail spending advanced in April despite the drag from fuel. Cox put its 2026 full-year SAAR forecast on revision watch through May 25, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. JD Power-GlobalData maintained 16.3 million the same Thursday. Memorial Day decides which forecast was reading the data right.
The behavioral question is the part that hasn’t resolved yet. GM’s CFO has framed pump-driven consumer shifts as having a four-to-six-month lag behind sustained pressure. Memorial Day 2026 sits at the four-month mark since the February 28 Hormuz closure. Labor Day September 7 is the six-month mark. The window between holds whatever behavior change actually shows up in driving and purchase data. AAA still projects 45 million Memorial Day travelers and 39.1 million expected to drive 50 or more miles between May 21 and 25. That number didn’t soften.
What to watch: Florida pump anchors through Memorial Day weekend. The Cox revision decision Sunday. The GasBuddy mid-cycle update due late June. The IEA’s July Oil Market Report when Birol either confirms or revises the red-zone framing he set out Thursday. One of those four landmarks moves Cox off the maintain it’s been on since January.
