By the way, M4C costs 135 fuel.
5 Shermans cost 675fuel.
675 fuel at 24' (assuming no molotovs or at nades) means 28fuel/per minute through entire 24mins.
What does it mean? It means you have been completly outplayed.
I have to disagree. As some people have stated you don't have to control 90% of the map (which would equal being outplayed) to have 28 fuel per minute as income. You also forgot that Lend Lease Doctrine can drop fuel for munitions even augmenting their fuel advantage and compensating possible cut off times.
Other than that, in case an Axis player manages to get out a tank of any format the Soviet player can either easily tech up to T2 (20 fuel with the most recent patch if I recall correctly) to build a ZiS in combination with AT-nades/mines or the game has already progressed so far that he is not far away - CP-wise - from calling in M4Cs to handle this single Axis tank. Assuming equal skill range, of course.