Absolutely, Steves11, I usually have to counter. I certainly cannot drive to Silver City for $50 when it’s a 4-hour round trip. My rate is now $300 for Silver City. Lets just say, I don’t put as many miles on my car anymore, which is a great thing. 
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This is the only business that I know where the buyers dictate the price to the sellers of services (us).
I drive a Prius and it has made my life so much easier!
I was wondering what everyone was doing about this. I haven’t really seen an impact til lately when gas went to $4.99/gallon and it’s taking me $57 to fill my tank instead of $27. Like you said though - they are not being impacted directly with gas prices to their business so there is no incentive to raise (already lowball offers) - I’ve upped an average of $5-10 depending on location. They already fuss at my fees because they are higher than the “panel average”.
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What they fail to disclose is that the “panel average” is what they impose on the “panel”, not what the panel freely quotes to them.
That’s a big difference. I’ve noticed at least a $20.00 increase to fill up my SUV here in NM.
That’s very true … and I have raised my fees accordingly.
I will say this. You raise your fees due to higher gas prices. Then gas goes down - do you lower your fees?
On distance jobs I have raised rates slightly. They will not go down if gas prices go down and I won’t bill anything called a gas charge. Because doing that puts you in a position to have to drop back down.
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I have my own fee expectations. When they are not met, I just counter and take the jobs I want. I don’t vary my fees based solely on specific costs I incur. I simply figure out my desired margin and go for that. Sometimes I get it and sometimes I don’t. Line item costs are too hard to peg for order fee maximization. For me, anyway.
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