Flea Work: Steady Income + Foot in the Door

Flea control services produced consistent, but not significant, revenue for pest management companies last year. On average, flea services generated $26,900 or 4 percent of overall revenue for PMPs in 2021, found the 2022 PCT State of the Flea Control Market survey. The survey was sponsored by Zoëcon/Central Life Sciences and compiled by Readex Research, an independent market research company.

The percentage of revenue created by flea control services remained the same over the past three years for 59 percent of pest control company locations and increased for 20 percent.

In Southwest Oklahoma, drought has intensified the flea problem and the region also has sandy soil, which fleas love, said Chad Highley, owner of Environmental Pest Control in Lawton.

As a result, controlling fleas “represents a fair amount of the jobs that we do. We have several customers that are just fleas only,” he said. Flea control accounts for 10 to 12 percent of the work performed by the company.

Less precipitation in the Houston, Texas, area, also has led to flea work “increasing every year,” said Greg Schoch, president of Anytime Pest Elimination in Baytown. Flea control accounts for 10 percent of service revenue at the company.

“Fleas are really bad here,” said Schoch. While they’re more problematic in spring and summer, they can be a year-round issue. “It’s nonstop,” he said.

Flea control isn’t the money maker it was in the 1980s and early ’90s. “Flea control has diminished tremendously,” said Charles Fyfe, who has worked in pest management for 40 years. The owner of Envirocare Pest Control in Gardiner, Maine, attributed the drop to the introduction of on-pet flea treatments. Currently, flea control accounts for about 2 percent of Envirocare’s overall revenue.

Nor is flea work a big part of the business at Ja-Roy Pest Control, a Rentokil company in Covington, La.. From spring through fall, the company performs five to six flea treatments a week, generating less than 1 percent of revenue overall.

Still, flea service is “something we’ll always offer and be able to knock out,” said Trent Johnson, area district manager for Ja-Roy.

Successful control of fleas is an opportunity to sell quarterly pest control service to satisfied customers. “We’ve kind of got a foot in the door; they’re happy with what we did, so we do try to get them into a recurring program,” said Johnson.