Drive ten minutes in the wrong direction this week, and it could cost you. A survey of dozens of stations within a 10-mile drive of downtown Dothan shows regular unleaded ranging from $3.63 a gallon at the cheapest pump to just a penny shy of $4 at the priciest — a spread of roughly 37 cents that adds up fast for anyone filling a 15-gallon tank.
According to fuel-tracking data compiled this week across 66 stations within that 10-mile radius, the average price for a gallon of regular in the Dothan area sits at $3.81, with the low end anchored by Sam’s Club Gasoline on Ross Clark Circle NW at $3.63 a gallon.
There’s a catch: Sam’s Club fuel is reserved for paying club members. Drivers without a membership card have solid options nearby, though — 7 Star Discount on East Cottonwood Road ($3.64), Citgo on Montgomery Highway ($3.66), and Flying J on Ross Clark Circle ($3.66) all undercut the metro average without requiring a card swipe first.
A cluster of other stations along Ross Clark Circle and South Oates Street, including several Inland, Raceway and Murphy USA locations, were holding in the high $3.60s to $3.70s.
At the other end of the spectrum, the most expensive stations counted in the same 10-mile sweep were charging within a penny or two of $4 a gallon — a price point that would have seemed unthinkable to Wiregrass drivers as recently as this past winter.
The roughly 37-cent gap between the cheapest and priciest pumps in town is a reminder that loyalty to a single station, or simply grabbing gas at the first sign on the highway, can be an expensive habit.
The citywide numbers tell a similar story of a market on the move. AAA-sourced data put Dothan’s average price at $3.89 a gallon at the end of last week, up 19 cents — about 5% — in just seven days, and a striking 39% higher than a year ago.
Dothan has also been running a few cents above Alabama’s statewide average of roughly $3.78, a pattern that has held for much of the year and reflects the Wiregrass region’s distance from major refineries and pipelines compared with cities like Birmingham or Mobile.
Diesel, meanwhile, has climbed even faster: Dothan-area truckers and farmers were paying around $5.12 to $5.44 a gallon in recent readings, up more than 40% from last summer.
Why the run-up? The short answer is 7,000 miles away, in the Persian Gulf. Fighting between the United States, Israel and Iran that broke out earlier this year repeatedly disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas.
The initial outbreak of war sent gasoline futures up more than 30% in a matter of weeks — the sharpest run-up since at least 2000 — and pushed the national average price briefly above $4.50 a gallon in May, the highest in four years. Prices eased through June as a ceasefire held and crude oil retreated, dipping to roughly $3.79 nationally in early July.
That relief was short-lived: when President Trump declared on July 8 that the ceasefire was “over” and announced a renewed blockade targeting vessels moving through the Strait, oil markets snapped back, and the national average has hovered around $4.09 a gallon for the past two weeks, according to AAA, with crude oil holding in the $80-to-$90-a-barrel range.
Alabama has largely been insulated from the worst of it. The state’s relatively low gas tax keeps its average among the 10 cheapest in the country, well under the national figure — but “cheaper than the rest of the country” and “cheap” are different things when a gallon still costs nearly a dollar more than it did a year ago.
For Dothan drivers, the practical takeaway is that price-checking is worth the two minutes it takes. A driver filling a 15-gallon tank at the cheapest station in this week’s survey would pay roughly $5.55 less than at the most expensive one — not enough to change anyone’s month, perhaps, but enough to cover a fast-food lunch, and a small measure of control at a moment when the biggest forces driving the price at the pump are being decided thousands of miles away, in the waters off Iran.
Prices in the fuel market can shift by several cents within a single day, so drivers hunting for the lowest number are best served by checking a live price-tracking app immediately before heading out.
Prices reflect the most recent available station-level and AAA-sourced metro data as of this week and are subject to change; individual station prices fluctuate daily.
