Drivers lined up for blocks in Powder Springs this week after two gas stations sitting side by side on Marietta Street got into a price war so fierce that regular gasoline briefly sold for just 97 cents a gallon. The sudden discount, offered at the Amoco and Sunoco stations located at 4148 and 4150 Marietta Street, sent cars streaming off the road and into a traffic jam that eventually forced police to step in.
As reported by WSB-TV, station managers confirmed to the outlet's Tom Jones that the two were locked in a genuine price battle, not a one-time promotion. One Amoco manager explained the strategy bluntly: “We be like 5 cents lower than you and they don't want to agree with that so now it's a war.” Sunoco, for its part, simply matched whatever price Amoco posted, and the back-and-forth sent numbers tumbling well below a dollar a gallon.
Drivers told the station prices had dropped to $1.54, $1.44 and $1.39 per gallon before bottoming out near 97 cents. Wartanna Haywood, who usually spends around $90 to fill her truck, said she paid just $15 during the price war after buying gas for $1.14 a gallon. “Ain't it a wonderful day for America,” she said, later adding, “Yes. Look at god baby. Look at god.”
How Far Below Market the Price Really Fell
The scale of the discount becomes clearer against the backdrop of Georgia's regular pump prices. According to Cobb County Courier, AAA reported the statewide average for regular gasoline at $3.81 a gallon on October 12, meaning the 97-cent price was roughly $2.84 below what most Georgians were paying. The same report noted Cobb County drivers were paying an average of $3.80 per gallon that day, essentially matching the state figure.
Georgia drivers were already getting a break at the pump before the price war even began. Governor Brian Kemp signed a 30-day emergency executive order on September 28 suspending the state's 33.3-cent-per-gallon motor fuel excise tax, a move detailed by the Office of the Governor. That relief has since been extended; CBS News reported Kemp pushed the suspension and related fuel emergency provisions through November 5 to keep cushioning drivers amid ongoing international market disruptions.
Even with the state tax paused, federal excise tax of 18.4 cents per gallon still applied to every sale, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration — meaning federal taxes alone made up close to a fifth of that 97-cent price. The math underscores just how little margin, if any, the two stations were working with as they undercut each other.
Why the Discount Was Even Legal
Selling gas below cost might sound like it should run afoul of state law, but Georgia has no such prohibition. The Supreme Court of Georgia struck down the state's ban on below-cost fuel sales back in 1987 in Strickland v. Ports Petroleum Co., ruling the restriction violated the state constitution's due process clause, per FindLaw. That decades-old precedent is why nothing stopped Amoco and Sunoco from racing each other to the bottom. Separately, Georgia Code § 10-1-164, enforced by the Georgia Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division, still requires stations to post accurate per-gallon prices and bars charging more at the pump than what's advertised — rules that apply regardless of how low a station chooses to go.
Traffic Chaos Forces Police to Step In
The rock-bottom prices drew so many drivers that Marietta Street, a central commercial corridor in Powder Springs, became gridlocked. Powder Springs Police ultimately ordered drivers waiting in the roadway to clear out and blocked entrances to the gas pumps, according to WSB-TV's report. Officers later allowed drivers back in once traffic eased, but described the scene as out of control, with cars having to be stopped from entering the stations altogether.
Police say they now plan to ask the two gas stations to coordinate with them directly if another price war breaks out, according to the station's report. The gas war has since ended and prices at both stations have risen back up.
The episode played out during an unusually expensive autumn for drivers nationally. AAA reported that the national average for regular gasoline stood at $4.36 per gallon in October, the first time in AAA's history that the national average remained above $4.00 during that month, according to AAA. Against that backdrop, the brief dip to under a dollar a gallon on one stretch of Marietta Street stood out as a rare — and fleeting — bright spot for local drivers.
