PCO Recalls Energy and Inflation Crises of 1970s

Editor’s note: Charles Ruby, owner of Safe Exterminating Co., Jasper, Ga., submitted the following guest editorial to PCT in response to our June 2022 cover story “Money in the Tank,” which examined what PCOs are doing in response record-high fuel costs.

Regarding your recent magazine cover story (“Money in the Tank”) I think back to the fall of 1973. It was during the Arab oil embargo, which forced bug businesses nationwide to switch from predominantly monthly service to every-other-month or quarterly service within five years (1973-1978). 

Gasoline prices doubled (from approximately 45 cents to 85 cents per gallon) overnight. They NEVER came back down. Inflation dominated America until the late 1980s. For example, in 1970 monthly pest control service in Atlanta was $6 per month and by 1986 it was $25 per month. I was there and I experienced it each day. I was a 24-year-old serviceman (we did not call ourselves techs back then; we were proud to be called SERVICE-men).  Anyone under 60 now is too young to be part of this huge transition that disrupted historical service regimes since WWII.

What will happen now? My prediction...history always repeats itself. As the saying goes, "The game does not change. Just new names on the back of the jerseys." Inflation is here to stay for five years or more. The bug biz will have to change in many ways to make it affordable for the consumer, pay adequately to keep an ever-increasing, tech savvy worker (who will demand more income for his labor) and owners will have to figure it all out…or be out of the bug biz.