Gas It Up!

With gas prices still low, it's not much of a surprise that Americans fueled up this summer at levels not seen since the recession began almost nine years ago, new data shows. Americans purchased about 406 million gallons of gasoline per day, on average, in June, according to data the U.S. Energy Information Administration released last week.

That just surpassed a previous record set in July 2007. But fuel consumption typically peaks for the year later in the summer, in July or August, when road-trip season is in full swing. So Americans likely purchased an all-time record volume of gasoline this summer.

Of course, part of this growth has been the drop in gasoline prices. The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline topped $4 in spring 2008, and approached that level again in 2011 and 2012. When it began dropping - now down close to $2 a gallon - we began driving more again.