If you get an error "Adress already in use" with autossh check with lsof
or netstat
if something already listen on the Ports you want to use.
There are three Ports you have to look at. If your Command look like this:
/usr/local/bin/autossh -f -M 5100 -g -N -C -L 8080:127.0.0.1:80 example.com -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa -l user
The following three ports need to be available: