What if your fuel bill was $1,200 a month?

Now, this is pain at the pump.

Record-setting fuel prices have hammered California drivers, but few are reeling like Rick and Arleen Roberts of Los Banos.

Their monthly bill to fill up his diesel VW Golf and her Corolla: Just shy of $1,200.

No typo, no misplaced comma.

"It's killing me," said Rick, 50, a scientist for Roche Pharmaceutical in Palo Alto.

"I never believed we'd be paying this much," sighed Arleen, a catering manager for a hotel in Fresno. Yep, he commutes 220 miles a day over Pacheco Pass to the Peninsula. She travels 165 miles deep into the Central Valley. That's 1,925 miles a week — or more when they work six days out of seven, which both often do.

Some people criticized the couple for choosing to live so far from work, when gas prices are hovering around $3.63 a gallon and diesel is $4.18.


Read More