Pest Control Equipment - Why Productivity & Downtime Are Critical
Posted by Andrew Greess on Dec 16, 2013
Pest Control Equipment | Pest Control Sprayers | Pest Control Spray Rigs
Why do I spend all my time talking about how important productivity and downtime are when it comes to pest control equipment? For exactly the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks. Because that's where the money is!
Every few years the National Pest Management Association does a detailed survey of US pest control companies, then compiles the data is a useful and interesting format for pest control owners.
One of the factors NPMA collects is the amount of money spent by pest control firms on various expenses. By far, the largest expense for pest control companies is Wage Expense.
( NPMA 2010 Business Operating Ratio Survey, page 19)
This chart shows that Wage Expense is about 42-47% of revenues. (Note: for very small companies (less than $150K in revenue) wage expense is lower. These are 1-2 person companies and my guess is that the owner takes more income in the form of profits rather than wages, which might be taxed at a higher rate).
In any case, Wages are the largest expense in pest control companies. It seems to me that the primary goal of pest control equipment is to impact (reduce or improve) wage expenses by boosting productivity.
Pest control sprayers / equipment can boost technician productivity by getting jobs done faster & better (e.g., fewer callbacks) and by reducing downtime. Impacting wage expenses in this way is the biggest impact of pest control spray rigs / equipment on company profitbability.
Saving a few dollars on pest control sprayers is much less impactful to the bottom line than finding a sprayer that boosts productivity or reduces downtime by even a small margin.
This why I spend so much time talking about the impact of pest control equipment on productivity and downtime. It is where the greatest leverage is. Unfortunately it seems so many pest professionals are only focused on the upfront purchase price of the equipment. The purchase price is a small number compared with the impact on productivity/wage expense.
Comments?
