PestBossPro Blog — Running a Pest Control Business

Adding a Second Truck to a Pest Control Business: When and How

Going from one truck to two is the biggest single step most pest control owners take. With one truck, the business is you. With two, it becomes a company: payroll, a second vehicle, a technician treating properties under your name, and an owner who can't be in two driveways at once. Done at the right time and in the right way, it can roughly double what the business can handle. Done too early, it can put a profitable one-truck company under strain.

More Programs, More Hours

Adding the programs in Adding Mosquito, Rodent and Termite Programs to a Pest Control Business is often what fills the first truck to the top. Once mosquito packages, rodent checks and quarterly accounts are all competing for the same days, something has to give. A second truck is one answer. It isn't always the first one.

Signs the First Truck Is Full

Watch for these before you buy anything:

• Recurring accounts keep going overdue. If the Waiting List shows quarterly accounts past their 7-day grace week after week, you don't have enough hours.
• You are turning down work or booking one-time jobs so far out that customers go elsewhere.
• You are working every evening and weekend just to keep up, with no time to sell or plan.
• Your routes are already dense. If you are still driving across town between stops, tighten the routes first. That may buy you more time than a second truck.

Run the Numbers Before the Truck

A second truck has to pay for itself: the vehicle, insurance, equipment, product, a technician's wages and the time it takes you to train and manage them. Work out how many stops a week the second truck needs to cover its costs, using the hourly cost method from the pricing article. Then check whether you have that much work, or a clear way to get it, before the truck arrives.

A useful test: if the second truck started tomorrow, could you fill its first month from the accounts that are already due or overdue on your Waiting List? If yes, you are probably ready.

How to Split the Work

There are a few common ways to divide work between two trucks, and the right one depends on your customer list:

• By area. One truck takes the east side, one takes the west. This keeps both routes dense and cuts driving.
• By type of work. One truck runs residential quarterly accounts, the other runs commercial monthly accounts or mosquito programs.
• Owner and technician. The technician runs the steady recurring route; the owner takes initial services, inspections and anything that needs a sales conversation.

Many owners start with the third option, then move toward splitting by area as the company grows.

Setting Up the Second Truck in the Software

In PestBossPro, add the new technician as an employee with a personal PIN and assign them a truck. On the dispatch board, filter by truck to see each one's day, and auto-route each truck's stops Closest First or Furthest First from the shop. Saved views make it quick to switch between trucks.

The technician logs into the tech app with your company login and their PIN and sees only their own stops, in route order, with navigation, service and access notes and past notes from earlier visits. Tech GPS shows on the office map, so you can see where both trucks are. When they complete a treatment that used a tracked product, the application record is kept under their name and license number.

Move Accounts Carefully

Some customers have known only you for years. When their stop moves to the new technician, a short heads-up helps: a text saying a new member of the team will be handling their service, along with the usual reminder the night before. Make sure the gate code, the dog, the bait-station locations and anything else you know about the property are written in the service and access notes before the first visit, not after.

The Owner's Job Changes

With two trucks, the owner's day changes even if they are still on a truck. Someone has to build both routes, answer customer calls while both trucks are out, check the “need a chemical record” list, follow up on quotes and handle declined cards. Many owners find they need to set aside time every week, or a part of each morning, for that office work.

That shift is the first step toward the move described in From Owner-Operator to Manager: Stepping Off the Truck in a Pest Control Business.

Hire Before You Buy

The truck is the easy part. The technician is the hard part. Start looking for the right person well before you need them, and give them time to train on ride-alongs before they run a route alone. The next articles cover hiring and training. To see how PestBossPro handles multiple trucks, technicians and routes, visit the PestBossPro pest control business software page.