In early April, Ben Brink looked at his budget and realized he could no longer afford to drive to work.
Brink, a Longmont resident, is a project manager for a metro Denver construction company and commutes to Cherry Hills Village every day in his truck, driving at least 40 miles one way. That doesn’t include trips between job sites.
“My family and I are on a shoestring budget anyway,” Brink said. “We have three kids and my wife is a teacher, and it just got to a point where we were looking around and saying, ‘Hey, we usually have a little bit of money at the end of the month. Why don’t we have any?’”
Itap because Brink was paying almost double at the pump, jumping from a maximum of $600 a month over the summer to almost $1,200 recently. He’s now in the process of leaving his job in the south metro and starting a handyman business in Longmont.
Brink is one of many Front Range workers feeling the sting of rising gas prices, which increased by more than 55 cents a gallon on average in the last week, according to the fuel price comparison website and app GasBuddy.
The company surveyed 844 metro Denver gas stations and found an average price of $4.42 per gallon on Monday. Thatap 68.3 cents higher than that time last month, and $1.49 higher than that time last year, according to GasBuddy price reports.
As of Thursday, Denver’s cheapest gas was priced at $4.09 per gallon, and the most expensive was $4.59 per gallon, according to GasBuddy.
The national average gas price was $4.56 per gallon, up 42 cents from last month and $1.41 from last year, according to data from AAA.
“Gasoline prices rose in every state over the last week,” GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan said in a statement. “With so many moving pieces, the outlook remains highly fluid, and while some localized relief may emerge, broader price volatility is likely to persist in the near term.”
The increase is not isolated to metro Denver, according to AAA. The is now $4.40, up $1.26 from one year ago.
For truck drivers, the average price for diesel in Colorado is now $5.50, $2.11 more per gallon than one year ago.
AAA found the average gas price was $4.46 per gallon in Durango, up $1.48 from one year ago; $4.40 in Fort Collins and Loveland, an increase of $1.32; $4.71 in Glenwood Springs, a $1.19 increase; $4.53 in Grand Junction, a $1.32 increase; $4.34 in Greeley, a $1.27 increase; $4.36 in Pueblo, a $1.41 increase; and $4.71 in Vail, a $1.17 increase.
For some people, like Lindsay Ellsworth, simply choosing not to drive isn’t an option.
Ellsworth, 40, commutes from Brush to the Denver area at least once a week for her 4-year-old daughter’s medical appointments — a trip that takes, on average, at least 90 minutes in each direction. The closest Children’s Hospital satellite location is in Broomfield, and her daughter’s speech therapist is based in Aurora, she said.
Her daughter has a genetic disorder known as 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, Ellsworth said. She was diagnosed at roughly 3 weeks old, and since then has been in a variety of therapies and sees several specialists, the mother added.
“We go to Brighton or Denver anytime she is sick as well,” Ellsworth said. “Her (primary care physician) is in Brighton because good pediatric care is impossible to find.”
Itap frustrating because she has no choice but to pay the increasing gas prices, she said. There’s no alternative.
Rideshare driver Joseph Guerrero counts himself lucky because he recently started taking on more work from a Colorado-based drivers cooperative that pays more than double what he could earn from Uber or Lyft. Guerrero asked to be identified by his middle name because he’s worried about retaliation from the rideshare companies for talking publicly about his experience.
Guerrero shared screenshots of payouts from different companies to drive customers to Denver International Airport from downtown. Uber and Lyft typically charge riders around $40 to $60 to get to the airport, and in recent trips offered to pay Guerrero less than $15. The Colorado Drivers Co-op charges customers similar rates, but paid Guerrero more than $50 for one trip.
“That’s what I rely on,” Guerrero said. “I only do Lyft just to get me out of an area and then switch back to the co-op. I have a lot of people who schedule their rides throughout the week, but they use on-demand as well.”
Even with the better pay, the increase in gas prices is hurting his budget, Guerrero said. He’s cut money from his grocery budget to pay for gas, which is now an additional $100 per week.
The idea of driving only for Uber or Lyft “is a joke right now,” he said. “Who would be able to make ends meet?” he said. “It would be a struggle.”
Traveling cooking instructor Bailey Snowmoore stopped driving for ride-hailing and meal delivery companies like DoorDash when she realized how much of her pay was going to gas.
Snowmoore and her wife used to bring home an extra $300 to $400 a month through gig work, which they saved up for unplanned expenses or fun activities.
“Now, our entire budget is rent, bills and maybe $10 extra toward going out a month,” she said.
Workers like Brink said that while they know there’s a certain amount of economic variability in gas prices no matter what, there are definitely bigger factors at play.
“I feel like the political choices that have been made in the past few months — it was pretty obvious what the consequence of a war in the Middle East was going to be, and yet we went and did it anyway, which was pretty stupid in my opinion,” Brink said.
Katie Kannen, owner of Denver meal delivery company , said she sees the impact of rising fuel costs across the board, like energy surcharges from trash and recycling companies to paying additional fuel stipends to the company’s contract delivery drivers.
“It’s harder and harder to run a small business when there are so many things happening on a national or global level that are beyond our control,” Kannen said. “It occasionally feels like an uphill battle — you’re controlling for all the things you can control, and then there’s a war in Iran.”
Guerrero said he was glad to see a bill recently introduced by state Rep. Jenny Willford, HB 26-1273, to limit how much money rideshare companies could take from a driver’s pay, but he’s not confident Gov. Jared Polis would sign it into law after the governor vetoed a ride-hailing safety bill in 2025 following pressure from Uber and Lyft.
“I do this every day, and people rely on us,” Guerrero said. “(Polis) doesn’t care about us, but everyone in our community can tell you that people are using rideshares to get to work.”
