A Tank of Gas Cost Just $5 in This Wild Price War

Gas prices are cratering around the U.S. The national average was falling at a clip of 1¢ per gallon last week, and prices have kept on dropping since. The current national average for a gallon of regular is just $1.88, according to AAA, compared with $1.97 last Monday.

Thirteen states, mostly in the South and Midwest, are now averaging $1.70 or less per gallon. And in places where gas price wars have heated up locally, the cost of filling up the tank has plummeted much further. We saw rates below $1.50 per gallon popping up last November, which seemed astonishing at the time.

But that's nothing compared to the insane gas price war launched over the weekend in Michigan. Several gas stations in Houghton Lake, Mich., cut prices to under $1 per gallon over the last few days, and for a while, the price of a gallon of regular was just 47¢ at one station.

If, say, you have a small car with a 12-gallon tank and needed 11 gallons to fill it up, the total would come to a mere $5.17 with gas prices of only 47¢. The pricing stunt generated so much attention that cars lined up for more than an hour to fill up at the station, and police had to be called in to direct traffic.

As of Tuesday, according to GasBuddy, prices in Houghton Lake were being reported at $1.28 to $1.31 per gallon—which is way more than 47¢, but still dirt cheap compared to almost anywhere else in the country.

Overall, gas prices in Michigan have dropped 13¢ over the past week. GasBuddy reports that gas prices dropped even more statewide in Indiana and Ohio, to the tune of a roughly 16¢ decrease in one week's time.