PestBossPro Blog — Running a Pest Control Business

Chemical Waste: Keeping Product Costs Under Control in a Pest Control Business

After labor and the truck, product is one of the biggest costs in a pest control business. It is also one of the easiest to waste without noticing. A little extra in every tank, a full mix when the day only needed half, a jug that sat too long. None of it shows up as a line on a bill. It just shows up as a product order that comes around sooner than it should.

The Last Leak on the List

Getting paid on time, covered in Declined Cards and Past-Due Accounts in a Pest Control Business, protects the money coming in. Controlling product waste protects the money going out. Both matter, and in a small company the owner usually controls both directly.

The Label Comes First

Before anything about cost: every product has a label that sets how it may be mixed, applied, stored and disposed of. The label is the law. Cutting waste never means going below the rate the label calls for on a given target, or skipping a step the label requires. It means not mixing, carrying or applying more than the job needs, and not losing product to spills, expired stock or careless handling. When in doubt, read the label and check your state lead agency's rules.

Where Product Goes to Waste

Waste in a small pest company usually comes from a handful of habits:

• Mixing a full tank every morning, whatever the day's route needs.
• Eyeballing instead of measuring, so every tank is a little different.
• Leftover mix that has to be dealt with under the label's directions at the end of the day.
• Treating more area than the job calls for because nobody knows the property's size.
• Poor storage, so products get damaged or expire before they are used.

Build Your Mixes Once

Measuring starts with a standard. In PestBossPro, you build tank mixes from your products with rates per gallon: a perimeter mix, a mosquito barrier mix, whatever you use regularly. Each product carries its active ingredient, EPA reg. no., application method and rates. Once a mix is set up, every technician uses the same one, so the tank on Truck 2 matches the tank on Truck 1.

Set mixes up to follow the label for each product and target. When a label changes or you switch products, update the mix once and every truck gets the new version.

Load for the Day's Stops

The tech app uses your mixes to work out what to load for the day and what was applied. Instead of filling the tank out of habit, the technician mixes for the stops actually on their route. Fewer leftovers, fewer partial tanks sitting overnight, less product handled under disposal directions.

This habit is part of training too. New technicians who learn to mix for the day from the start rarely pick up the full-tank habit. More on that in Training New Technicians in a Pest Control Business: Ride-Alongs, Records and the Tech App.

Know the Size of Every Property

You can't apply the right amount if you don't know the area. PestBossPro stores measurements on each property from the satellite map: home square feet, perimeter linear feet, mosquito (yard) square feet, lawn insect and bed areas. The technician knows how much perimeter or yard the job covers, and the application record notes the area treated in square feet or linear feet of perimeter.

Measurements also tie product cost to price. A large yard uses more mosquito mix than a small one, and an estimate priced off yard size makes sure the customer pays for what the job takes.

Compare What You Applied to What You Bought

Every completed treatment that used a tracked product gets an application record with each product in the mix, its rate and the total amount used. Chemical reports pull those records for any date range. Once a month, or at the end of each season, compare the totals applied against the product you bought in the same period.

A close match means product is going where it should. A big gap is worth looking into. It may be leftover mix, spills, a technician mixing heavy, or records that never got written. The “need a chemical record” button shows completed treatments missing their record, so you can rule out that last one first.

Small Savings, Every Tank

Product waste is rarely dramatic. It is a little in every tank, every day, on every truck. That is exactly why fixing it adds up. Standard mixes, loading for the day, measured properties and a monthly comparison turn a vague cost into one you control. To see how products, mixes, measurements and chemical reports fit together, visit the PestBossPro pest control business software page.