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Back in high school I worked at a small store that sold gas. Some of the smaller mom and pop type stores have to pay more for their gas than the big chain stores do so they may charge more. But that doesn't mean there isn't gouging. I used to work in a city that was kind of in a bubble on the freeway. There was no town within about 5 miles of it either way and the stations knew it. Gas there was 20cents a gallon higher than anywhere else.
The real gouge is when they get greedy. For example there is a little independent store near my house, just outside of town that may go out of business because of this. They would raise their prices during peak times. So from 6am-9am they would price the gas at $4.15 per gallon. Then from 9am-3pm they dropped it to $4.01 then raised it back up from 4pm-7pm then dropped it back down for the night. They wanted to get the most out of the commuters. Someone got pissed and called the local paper who did a story on it. The story spread around town like wildfire and even the local news showed up to do a story and the city mayor made a statement about how he thought that was wrong. Their store looks like a ghost town now. They stopped doing it, but it may cost them their business.
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