With gas prices on a continuing upswing, pain at the pump is a common driver symptom these days — in western Wake and across the nation.

What’s a family to do to remedy the situation?

Smaller cars. Less driving. No driving at all.

Area residents are doing what they can to lessen the bite of gas costs on the family wallet.

Last week I hit the road (in my more than 30-miles-per-gallon car, thank goodness) to see just how local drivers are coping with the higher gas costs.

“They’re making me drive less,” said Holly Springs resident Hal Drunheller, who was getting gas at an Exxon station off Main Street in Holly Springs. A resident of the town, Drunheller was actually getting gas — at $3.29 a gallon for regular — for his 18-year-old daughter’s Hyundai Accent, since the UNC-Chapel Hill student couldn’t afford to pay the prices herself.

Drunheller drives a BMW 318 which he said is also fairly good on gas, so he’ll be keeping it around. But the 50-year-old said that if gas prices continue to rise he thinks it will drive most car buyers away from big vehicles like SUVs.

North in Apex, Louis Stromback wasn’t feeling quite as much pain at the pump, thanks to his trusty four-cylinder engine Toyota Tacoma. The truck does well on gas, as does his wife’s Toyota Camry, but he was still feeling pinched by higher gas prices.

Stromback was getting gas at a Shell station near the N.C. 55 and U.S. 64 interchange.

“It’s taking a bite out of the wallet,” he said, though he noted that the bite would be much worse if he didn’t have his small 12-gallon-tank truck.

Up in Morrisville 37-year-old Ken Harris knew all about the pain of filling the tank of a large vehicle.

At a Citgo station just off N.C. 54 Harris had just spent $62 putting about 19 gallons in his Ford F150’s 24-gallon tank.

Thankfully for the Chatham County resident, his workplace foots the bill for his pickup truck’s gas.

Harris works as an outside sales person at a Morrisville building supply company.

His wife, who commutes daily to Cary in a SUV, pays $100 weekly for gas.

But the couple won’t be getting a smaller car — yet. “We’re going to stick with what we’ve got for now,” he said.

Higher gas prices aren’t just felt directly at the pump. They also spread out indirectly, affecting businesses, such as, you guessed it, gas stations.

Lounis Benkaci, manager at the Cary Food Mart, said that the higher gas prices have been affecting his sales inside the store off Chatham Street in downtown Cary. With people spending all their money at the pump they have fewer bucks to spend on the soda and chips in the store’s interior.

Benkaci said the store had thought about lowering the prices on some of their items, but with gas prices higher that meant higher transport costs which were raising the prices of those items.

“It’s very tough now,” Benkaci said.