Fuel prices suck. It is what it is. If he’s working for someone under contract, he’s stupid to not have a fuel price adjustment line item in his contract. That was something I used to… ahem, use when I was managing multi-year projects. It works both ways if you’re trying to be honest with your client, too. They get a cut in prices as fuel changes down.
If he’s getting paid by timber production, then yeah fuel sucks. But it shouldn’t put you out of business. I have, let’s call them friends, who are killing it right now with jobs bid in 2020 when fuel prices were stupid low. They’re in a low-profit game to start with, where 6-8% is a reasonable margin, but all fuel prices are doing is losing them maybe .75% on the job.
Fuel is expensive, but so are wages, equipment payments, materials (yeah, there are some in logging), equipment repairs and so on. I mean, seriously. Think about it, let’s say a skidder burns 10 gallons of fuel an hour. That’s $40 an hour for off road fuel. An operator should be making $30, period, and a health package and employee overhead adds ~40% on the cost. The employee costs more than fuel. Much more than fuel at 2020 fuel prices.
Fuel prices didn’t put the guy out of business. It just didn’t. If I remember correctly, the guy is probably 55-60, at the point where he can retire, and did. He’s using fuel prices as a ruse to let a lot of guys go.