When Gas Prices Hit a 4-Year High, Drive Less this Memorial Day

This Memorial Day weekend, AAA projects more than 45 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles from home, setting a new holiday travel record. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline stands at $4.53, 42% increase in fuel cost in twelve months.
In New York, the statewide average reached $4.61 per gallon. In Arizona, drivers are approaching $5 per gallon in some areas.
AAA says about 87% of Memorial Day travelers plan to use a car to get from point A to point B, despite the higher gas prices compared to last year. An AAA spokesperson put it plainly: the more you can plan your route and plan to not deviate too much from it, the cheaper it is going to be for you to get to your destination.
That is exactly the right advice. The problem is that most people planning a multi-stop road trip or a delivery run this weekend are relying on google maps to do it. And Google Maps does not actually help you plan a more efficient route.

The Google Maps Problem Most Drivers Do Not Think About

Google Maps is the most-used navigation app in the world, and for getting from A to B it is excellent. But for anyone planning a multi-stop road trip or managing a delivery operation, it has three significant limitations that directly cost you money at the pump.
First, Google Maps caps every route at 10 stops. If your Memorial Day road trip involves more than 10 destinations, you have to manually split it across multiple separate sessions.
Second, Google Maps does not automatically optimize the order of your stops. It routes them in the exact order you type them. It does not find the most efficient sequence. That job is left entirely to you, and manual guesswork almost always produces a route that is longer than it needs to be. For a 15-stop road trip, there are trillions of possible stop sequences. Google Maps evaluates none of them.
Third, Google Maps does not save multi-stop routes. Plan a route on your laptop, close the browser, and it is gone. There is no reloading it on your phone when you leave the driveway.
For a weekend when gas costs 42% more than it did last year, driving an inefficient route is an expensive mistake that is completely avoidable.

What the Math Looks Like at $4.52 Per Gallon

The difference between an optimized route and a manually planned one is consistently measured at 15 to 30% fewer miles driven. At current gas prices, that gap has real dollar consequences.
For a road tripper visiting 12 destinations over the long weekend in a vehicle averaging 28 miles per gallon:
A poorly sequenced route covering 500 miles costs approximately $80.71 in fuel at $4.52 per gallon. The same 12 destinations in an optimized sequence covering 375 miles costs approximately $60.54. That is $20 saved on fuel on a single weekend trip, simply by visiting the same places in a smarter order.
For a delivery business running three vehicles making 40 drops each per day over the Memorial Day weekend surge, the numbers are significantly larger. At 20% fewer miles per vehicle per day, a three-vehicle fleet saves roughly 240 miles of driving over a single shift. At $4.52 per gallon and an average of 18 miles per gallon for a delivery van, that is approximately $60 saved per day in fuel costs alone, before factoring in reduced vehicle wear and driver overtime.

How to Plan a Smarter Route This Memorial Day Weekend

The fix is straightforward. MyRouteOnline handles the planning and optimization layer that Google Maps leaves out, and then exports directly to Google Maps for navigation. You get the efficiency of route optimization and the navigation experience you already know.
For road trippers:

Enter all your Memorial Day destinations into MyRouteOnline’s route planner in any order. It does not matter how you list them.
Click Plan My Route. The optimizer finds the most efficient visiting sequence across all your stops, minimizing total drive time and distance.
If you have a hotel reservation, a timed reservation, or any stop that must happen at a specific point in the trip, lock it in place. The optimizer sequences everything else around it.
Export the optimized route to Google Maps on your phone and navigate as normal.

For a 15-stop Memorial Day road trip, this process takes about three minutes. The saving in unnecessary miles starts the moment you leave your driveway.
For delivery businesses:
Memorial Day weekend drives a significant surge in delivery volume for florists, gift companies, BBQ and grocery delivery services, furniture and appliance retailers, and food businesses. At the same time fuel costs are at a four-year high, your drivers are making more stops than at almost any other point in the year.
Import your order list from Excel or CSV directly into MyRouteOnline. Set the number of drivers. The system generates optimized routes for your entire fleet simultaneously from one address list, balancing stops across drivers and minimizing total drive time. Each driver receives their route on the free MyRoute navigation app on their phone, with turn-by-turn navigation and live delivery tracking visible to the dispatcher in real time.
The fuel saving from route optimization is no longer a nice-to-have. It is a line item that pays for itself within the first week.

The Broader Picture: Record Travel, Record Fuel Cost

AAA says Americans are not sacrificing their leisure travel despite higher gas prices. They are making changes in their everyday life, trying to stretch that gallon of gas as far as they can, but they are still prioritizing leisure travel.
AAA says gas prices are not a factor in people’s decision to travel, but there are ways to save money for those who are driving. People are adjusting their budgets to make up the money elsewhere rather than cancelling their plans.
Adjusting your budget is one approach. Planning a route that uses fewer gallons to cover the same destinations is another. The first requires sacrifice. The second requires about three minutes and a free trial.
AAA forecasts that the heaviest traffic will happen Thursday and Friday afternoon before Memorial Day, between 3 and 6pm, and Monday afternoon for the return journey. If you are flexible on departure time, leaving outside those windows will save both time and fuel from stop-and-go traffic.

Before You Leave This Weekend

Whether you are planning a personal road trip or managing a delivery fleet through a holiday surge, the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your fuel bill this Memorial Day weekend is optimize the sequence of your stops before you leave, not after.
Google Maps will navigate your route faithfully. It will not make that route shorter. That part is up to you.