As local gas prices zoom past another mile marker, now averaging more than $3.50 a gallon, the high cost has drivers likely weighing the need for every trip.

The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded locally soared nearly 17 cents this week to a record high of $3.524, AAA East Central reported.

When Debbie Jozefowicz was on her way to work yesterday, the price of gas at the Exxon station on East Carson Street was $3.45 a gallon. By the time she left her part-time job four hours later, it was $3.55 a gallon.

"I should have gotten gas this morning," said Ms. Jozefowicz, 40, who lives on the South Side. "I didn't want to be late for work, so I decided to get gas when I got off."

Some drivers said they were eating out less and might cancel their summer vacation plans to compensate for what they are spending for gas.

Ollie Clayton, 24, of the Hill District said he knows people who are faced with a choice between buying a loaf or bread or a gallon of gasoline.

"One lady I know can't get certain prescriptions because she has got to have gas to go back and forth to work," Mr. Clayton said.

Gary Steckle, 58, of Lawrenceville, drives a shuttle van for Washington Plaza Luxury Apartments. The van could hold up to $120 worth of gas, but he limits his fill-ups to $90 to help keep costs down.

He also limits travel in his personal vehicle to his trips back and forth to work.

"If I can walk to the grocery store, I'll do it," Mr. Steckle said.

"To get to the doctors and all that, it's an awful lot of money," said Carol Licata, 75, a retiree from Arnold, who said a larger portion of her fixed income was going toward gasoline. "I don't drive that often, but have to take necessary trips … and [gas] takes a big chunk out of our budget."

Drivers aren't the only ones taking a hit. Retailers and other businesses are facing a customer base with less money to spend.

For a long time, consumers had seemed to absorb rising gas prices without being forced to cut back spending in other areas. But in the past five or six months, the costs have become too high.

"These high expenses are clearly impacting the consumer," said Steven Baumgarten, an analyst with PNC Capital Advisors in Philadelphia. It's no longer just the value or discount retailers either. Luxury stores are getting hit, as well.

"The dollar amount is finally having a material impact on the dollars that can be spent elsewhere," he said. Although overall retail spending has continued to grow at a slow pace, a hefty portion of the increase is going toward fuel. He estimated that the amount of money spent at gas stations has risen between 15 and 25 percent every month since October when compared to the amount spent during the same month the previous year.

Merchants also are being forced to pay higher fuel costs to move their goods around, but mall prices haven't changed much to reflect those expenses, Mr. Baumgarten said. With the slowing economy taking a toll on stores, consumers are more likely to find promotions and sales. "If anything, the retailers are probably eating that cost."

Some retailers, however, have tried to turn the high price of gas around and use it to drum up business, with grocery stores offering gas discounts based on the amount of money customers spend at the store. Giant Eagle's "fuelperks!" program is one example, but Shop 'n Save and Foodland have similar plans. "Fuelperks! redemption rates and Giant Eagle Advantage Card scan rates continue to be extremely high," Giant Eagle spokesman Dan Donovan said in a statement.

Diesel prices are rising even higher than gasoline, putting pressure on trucking and other shipping companies that use the fuel to transport goods around the country.

If filling your car with gasoline at $3.50 a gallon is a challenge, imagine keeping 24 trucks on the road that need 100 gallons of diesel fuel to fill up, at $4.50 a gallon. That is everyday life now for Tom Goslin, president of American Dispatch, a Strip District trucking company that delivers refrigerated foods.

"It's a daily chore staying on top of it," Mr. Goslin said. "Our 2008 budget has been reworked three times already."

Mr. Goslin said his company has been working on projections for the remainder of the year based on the assumption that diesel will top $5.50 a gallon by year's end.

"We try to find better ways, more economical ways, for delivering," he said, such as timing delivery trips so that trucks idle less often, or consolidating routes to reduce the miles traveled.

Even with such efforts, he said the company's 28 drivers are living "in fear."

"They know there's only X amount of dollars to go around and they're in fear of layoffs," he said. "They have fears and mortgages and school payments and bills like all of us.

"This is a complete unknown. We don't know where it's going, we don't know when it will stop -- if it will."

The American Trucking Associations said it would host a "fuel strategies workshop" in June to help fleet operators cope with soaring prices.

ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said fuel has now surpassed labor as the trucking industry's biggest cost, prompting some companies to install devices that prevent drivers from speeding. Companies also are shelling out for auxiliary power units and offering bonuses to drivers who cut down on idling and operate their trucks more efficiently.

Partly as a result of the gas price run-up, more drivers are considering less energy-dependent vehicles.

U.S. registrations of new hybrid vehicles rose 38 percent last year to a record 350,289, according to data released Monday by R.L. Polk & Co., a Southfield, Mich.-based automotive marketing and research company.

Hybrids made up just 2.2 percent of the U.S. market share for the year, but purchases were growing steadily even as overall automotive sales declined 3 percent.

Gasoline prices typically rise in the spring as stations switch over to pricier summer-grade fuel and demand picks up as more travelers take to the road.

But this year prices are rising even faster than normal, experts say, because of the massive jump in benchmark crude prices, which closed above $118 a barrel yesterday.

Those soaring prices are putting added strain on refiners and filling-station operators, which are struggling to pass the costs onto consumers. So even as drivers pay more, retailers -- the most public face of the oil business -- are getting increasingly squeezed.

"The farther you get from the wellhead, the greater the misery," said Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J. "There's a lot of stations across the country that are literally on the brink of bankruptcy."