Tim and Laurie Saucier drove from Selma to South Raleigh on Monday to do some bulk buying at Sam's Club -- mega-packs of lunchbox items and chicken patties -- and at one of the last gas stations to post regular at a price fractionally below $3.

They spent $87 to fill the tank and four gas containers in the trunk of their Chevy Cavalier. The extra gas was for the four cars at home.

"It's just easier some days to have an extra can of gas to put in the car, instead of having to run out and refill them," Laurie Saucier said. "Plus, we know the prices are going up before Christmas. They always do before the holidays."

Regular was selling for $2.999 a gallon at the Wilco Hess on U.S. 70 where the Sauciers stopped, and as low as $2.979 at a few other outlets in South Raleigh. The Triangle average price was $3.087, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

To cut their driving costs, the Sauciers pack all their errands into a single day each week. The same impulse has hurt business at a Smithfield restaurant where Tim works as manager.

"It's hurting everybody's business," Tim Saucier said. "People try to stay at home more often because of gas prices."

Laurie Saucier doesn't expect to see pump prices below $3 again before 2008.

"It may come down after the holidays, I think, but it'll be right at about $3," she said. "I don't think it'll ever go low again," she said.

If prices continue their recent run -- rising more than 12 cents in the past week -- the Triangle could reach record territory by next week, when more than 1 million North Carolinians will be on the road for the Thanksgiving holiday. Hurricane Katrina drove the local price to its current record, $3.184, in September 2005.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration says economic growth in China and other countries continues to push demand for oil higher, dragging up the price for fuel.

Diesel prices already are at unprecedented levels.

The Triangle average climbed past its October 2005 peak last week and set a record Sunday at $3.360 a gallon.

Rene Harger of Knoxville, Tenn., stopped at a Shell station on South Saunders Street and paid more for diesel fuel than he had ever spent in his life -- $3.359 a gallon.

The pump clicked off at $75 and 22.328 gallons. Harger scowled.

"I bet you they got a maximum limit" for credit card sales, he said. "There's no way I'm full yet."

He plucked a different piece of plastic from his wallet and finished tanking up.

Harger was towing a cream-over-coral 1940 Studebaker on a trailer to his shop in Knoxville. He will install a custom-built front suspension for its owner, an Outer Banks resident. Pulling that 3-ton load, his Dodge Ram 2500 three-quarter ton truck will get about 20 miles a gallon on the drive home, he said.

He doesn't have any choice but to pay the high price, he said.

"For a truck, there's no other thing you can do. You can switch to [a] gasoline [truck], but you don't get the mileage and your vehicle won't last as long. This has got way over 300,000 miles on it."

Harger was pessimistic about prospects for relief from high fuel prices. He noted that diesel prices sometimes rise in the fall as refiners begin producing more home heating oil, a similar product.

"They use the excuse of supplies being low during the heating season, but that's baloney. We all know better. But what can you do?" Harger said. "We don't have any people with spine in Congress to stand up to the oil companies."