I’ve done millions of dollars in mowing, millions in fertilizing, and millions in pest control. All three work, and there are incredible companies in each of these industries. But when you line the numbers up side by side, one model scales very differently than the rest. Let me show you exactly what I mean.
Let’s start with what it actually takes to get rolling and producing revenue.
Lawn care is where most guys begin. You’re typically looking at a half-ton truck for around $40,000, a trailer for about $5,000, one to two commercial mowers for $13,000 to $20,000, then your string trimmers, blowers, edgers, and miscellaneous gear for another $2,500 to $5,000. Total startup cost: roughly $60,000 to $80,000. Now, I know some of you are going to say you can go grab a small Ford Ranger with a dovetail and some push mowers. I get it. Not disagreeing with you. I’m going off averages here because every market is different.
Fertilization and weed control requires hauling heavy products, whether that’s liquid, water, or bagged material. So you typically need a 3/4-ton truck at $60,000 to $70,000. If you go the NPR box truck route with all your sprayers, hose reels, and pumps, you’re looking at $90,000 to $100,000 all in. Then a spray rig or ride-on sprayer/spreader runs $5,000 to $20,000. Add in fertilizer and chemical inventory at $3,000 to $3,000, plus PPE and small tools for another $3,000. Total startup: $70,000 to $110,000.
Pest control is a different animal. Small pickup or van for $25,000 to $35,000. Your B&G, backpack sprayer, foggers run about $3,000. Chemicals, $1,500. PPE, small tools, respirators, another $1,000. Total startup: $30,000 to $40,000.
And here’s something I wasn’t planning to include in this breakdown, but it hit me as I was thinking through it: even at scale, you could run a pest control company without having an office. Your technician can stop by and pick up product once a week from your garage or from the supply store. With fertilization, that’s tough because you need a place to store everything, holding tanks for water, fill stations, things like that. You could get away with a storage unit and move into an office as you scale. With mowing, storage units work well, and if you have an enclosed trailer, you can lock it up. But at some point you’re going to need a place to house all that equipment.
Labor Efficiency, Daily Production, and COGS
Lawn care typically runs a two-man crew. The most efficient crew is always going to be a one-man crew, but team members burn out, especially in the middle of the season. They just don’t like working alone. It’s really hard. You’ll see three- to four-man crews too, but the efficiency usually drops off with that third person (HOAs being a different story). Crew pay runs $18 to $22 an hour. Daily production is 15 to 25 lawns. Daily revenue is $800 to $1,200 a day, which I feel like is already a stretch for most companies. Top operators hit $1,500 to $1,800. Fuel costs around $150 a day, and maintenance runs 5% to 10% of revenue because there is so much equipment, so many breakdowns. Doesn’t matter if the mowers are brand new. The wear and tear is relentless. Total COGS: 45% to 55%. I’ve seen some companies above 55%, and I would not recommend that. At that point, you’re probably starting to go out of business. Net profit: 15% to 20%. On a daily production basis, you’re making $150 to $250 a day. And I’ll add this caveat: most maintenance companies are not doing 15%. They’re doing less than 10%.
Fertilization and weed control is truly a one-technician operation. Daily production: 20 to 35 lawns. If you’re in those dense areas doing small properties in the 1,000 to 4,000 square foot range, you can really turn them out. Daily revenue: $1,200 to $1,800. Top operators hit $2,200 to $2,500. Tech pay runs 12% to 15%. Material cost is way higher than pest control, around 10% to 15%. Fuel and maintenance, 3% to 5%. Total COGS: 30% to 40%, though I’ve seen really well-run fertilization companies in the 20s. Net profit: 15% to 25%, with some really dialed-in companies pushing 30%. Average daily profit per truck: $300 to $500.
Pest control is also a true one-technician model. Daily production: 12 to 18 stops. Daily revenue: $1,200 to $3,000. Top operators: $2,500 to $3,000. And you can throw in bed bug jobs or exclusion work, where you’re talking $5,000, $7,000, even $10,000 a day per tech. Tech pay: 10% to 14%. Chemicals: 3% to 5% of revenue, a lot lower than fertilization. Fuel and maintenance: 2% to 3%. Total COGS: 25% to 35%. I’ve seen companies with COGS in the 40s, and I don’t like seeing that. I like to keep it in the low to mid 20s or low 30s. Net profit: 15% to 25%, with some pushing 30%. I hear a lot of people say they’re making 50% profit margins, but that’s typically them doing all the work themselves. Average daily profit per truck: $500 to $1,200.
Weather Dependency
Every one of these industries battles the weather, but they battle it differently.
Lawn care takes the hardest hit. Rain shuts you down. Even morning rain can kill the day. Drought slows growth, and a lot of customers don’t have irrigation. I’ve been through years in southern markets where it was the worst drought in a century. Customers were skipping, wanting to cancel. You’re scrambling to do mulch installs, shrub pruning, anything to keep the guys busy. Then you get one rain day, two rain days, and you’re trying to make it up. It’s almost impossible to recover two to three lost days. Winter stops production in most northern markets. Companies add snow removal or Christmas lights, which just adds more complexity. You’re essentially running two different business models. I did that too. Maintenance in the summer, a whole different operation in the winter with a different set of equipment. Trucks getting beat up. And in southern markets, most companies switch to bi-weekly in the off-season, which drops revenue in half.
Fertilization and weed control handles weather better. Wind and rain can delay applications, but if it stops raining early, you can usually get back out there. And here’s what’s nice about fertilization: there’s no real per-day deadline for the customer. You don’t have to show up every Monday. You could be gone for a week and nobody knows the difference. Seasons are typically longer than mowing. In the north, snow and frost stop production early. But in the south, you can run fertilizer year round with winter pre-emergence treatments, which keeps cash flow steady. Meanwhile, up north, guys are either doing Christmas lights or shutting down completely. I really like fertilization and weed control for that reason alone, especially in southern markets where you can work year round. You can really build a sustainable business. In the north, you’re laying people off and hoping they all come back in the spring. It just makes things harder.
Pest control is the most weather-resistant of the three. Rain may delay exterior and mosquito treatments, but you can always do interiors. Commercial accounts keep things going year round. Hot weather actually boosts business. More bugs means more calls. Even in winter, rodents, bed bugs, and roaches keep the phones ringing. When I started Pest Badger, I had to decide which service industry I could work year round in my area. For me, that was pest control. I couldn’t do fertilization because of all the snow. Maintenance, I was already doing that, plus Christmas lights, softscaping, snow plowing, whatever could keep the guys busy. I had a couple million dollars in equipment. Front end loaders, tractors, the works. But when I started over, I knew pest control could run year round. That’s why I went all in.
They all face seasonality, but pest control and fertilizing in southern markets tend to have the most consistent year-round production.
Customer Lifetime Value
Lawn care customers stick around one to two seasons on average. At $50 per cut and 26 cuts per year, that’s $1,000. Add spring and fall cleanups at $500, and your total LTV is around $2,500. You can push it to $3,000 to $5,000 with pruning and mulch installs, but we’re just talking maintenance here.
Fertilization customers average about three years. They’re paying $500 to $800 per season, putting total LTV at $1,500 to $2,400.
Pest control customers pay an average of $45 per month and stay three to five years. Total LTV: $1,800 to $3,000.
Customer Acquisition Cost
With maintenance and fertilizing, you’ve got shorter retention, so you need a lower CAC to make the math work. If you’re on the higher end of revenue per customer and doing a lot of upsells and installs, you can recoup a higher acquisition cost. But it’s hard to justify heavy ad spend with higher churn.
Pest control is different. You can spend $150, $200, even $250 per customer and stay profitable because your LTV is $3,000-plus. When you get good at that, you can outspend and outlast your competitors.
Scalability
All of these businesses can scale. They just scale differently.
Lawn care scaling means adding more crews, more trucks, more equipment. In my opinion, it just kind of grows linearly.
Fertilization and weed control is way easier to scale than mowing because the routes are so tight. But material cost and weather still set limits. I will say this though: maintenance customers are way easier to get than fertilization customers, and way easier to get than pest control customers. That’s an advantage.
Pest control is where things get interesting. Each truck can produce $300,000 to $400,000 per year. Routes are recurring and predictable, and the model is easy to duplicate across markets. Once you figure out how to dominate one market, you can dominate multiple markets because you just print cash.
They all grow, but pest control compounds faster because of that recurring model. And if you get into southern markets with fertilization where it’s also more recurrent, I love that model too.
Barrier to Entry
Lawn care has no barrier to entry. None. Zero. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry has a lawn mower. You have a lawn mower and a weed whacker, you’ve got a company. You see it every year. Ten, fifteen, twenty new companies pop up, and then they’re gone by next season.
Fertilization and weed control has a moderate barrier. You need licensing, chemical training, and insurance. Every state is different. Some you can just take a test. Others require you to work under someone’s license for two to three years.
Pest control has the highest barrier. Licensing, insurance, education. I’ve been licensed in five or six states at this point, and in every single one, pest control was harder to get licensed in than fertilization. The upside of a higher barrier is less competition, more business value, but it also brings more sophisticated operators.
Emotional Need vs. Aesthetic Want
This is something Paul Giannone and I actually talked about for a long time at Pest World last year. What’s easier to sell? What cancels faster? Which one do customers drop first?
Lawn care makes a property look good, but they could hire anyone to cut the grass. Fertilization makes it perform better, keeps it green and weed-free. It’s a “keeping up with the Joneses” thing. Curb appeal.
Pest control protects what people actually care about: their home, their family, their pets. Termites, bed bugs, cockroaches, mosquitoes. People want their yard green. But they need a pest-free home.
Profit Margins
I’ve been to hundreds of companies across the country that do all three of these services. Here are the averages I’ve seen.
Lawn care: 10% to 20%. Really good companies running small, super-dense routes with efficient equipment can hit 25%. I’d actually say most are doing less than 10%, if I’m being honest. And robots are coming at some point. We’ve been trying to get these things out there for 20-plus years and they’re still not here, but that could change the game.
Fertilization and weed control: 15% to 25%, with top operators hitting the high 20s to low 30s.
Pest control: 15% to 25%, with top operators pushing 35%. I’ve heard people claim 45% to 50% margins, and it’s probably true, but they’re doing all the work themselves. That’s just not scalable.
These numbers don’t make one business better than the other. They just show how differently each model performs. There are incredible long-term fertilizing companies that do really well. But on average, pest control runs leaner and compounds faster because of the recurring structure.
Valuation and Exit Multiples
Take these as averages. I’ve seen companies in each of these industries get way higher multiples than what I’m about to share.
Lawn care: 1.5x to 3x multiple. Fertilization and weed control: 2.5x to 4x EBITDA. Pest control: 4x to 8x EBITDA.
Platform companies in each of these can go way higher. I’ve seen multiples across all three that blow these numbers away. But on average, investors pay more for the predictability of contracts and retention. Pest control just checks all those boxes. It’s the same hard work in every industry. Investors just pay a premium for that predictability.
What Each Business Taught Me
Lawn care was my first business. It taught me work ethic. It taught me a lot about business, period.
Fertilizing taught me that once you have products you can mark up and a license that requires a specific applicator, the profit margins are just way higher. Less competition. Better pay per truck, per technician. Better employees.
Pest control taught me leverage. If I’m going to spend my money, let me go back to those original numbers. One truck costs $70,000 to $100,000 and returns around $200,000 with two people. Another costs $100,000 and returns $250,000 with one truck. Or I can spend $25,000 to $35,000 on a pest control setup that can make $300,000 to $400,000 a year. Where am I going to get the best return on my money? Where can I recoup my investment the fastest? That’s pest control. The asset utilization is just way better because I’m getting a much higher return on my investment.
The Bottom Line
When you look at the numbers purely side by side, pest control gives you the most room for growth and the most predictable revenue to build on. If you’re mowing or fertilizing or thinking about adding pest control, take this as your sign to run the numbers.
All three of these work, but one of them compounds faster, holds customers longer, and builds a business that grows every single year. In my opinion, that’s pest control.
That’s exactly why, when I started back over, I built Pest Badger. I knew the best return on my money would be pest control going forward. And that’s why I started this channel: to help other operators and entrepreneurs just like you see what’s possible and dial in the model that scales the right way.
