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Hello, this is Ben and it’s time for another one of the Benz pest control podcasts. And today I want to talk about a lot of times I talk about things that we are seeing on a regular basis and today is no different. Lately we have been getting a lot of calls for people having roaches in vehicles, and roaches and vehicles is kind of an interesting situation. Roaches can literally be in any kind of mode of transportation, you can find roaches, in buses, you can find roaches, in planes, you can find roaches, in trains, you can have roaches, in boats, you can have roaches on yachts, or ships or cruise ships. You can also have roaches in your family vehicle. And now what’s what’s very common is that normally, the roaches derived from a source and in most cases we’re talking about German roaches, which are the infesting species of roaches here in Florida. And to give you an example, we had a local business who called up a couple of weeks back and said that one of their company trucks was just infested with roaches. So though I can’t tell you 100% I would say that more than likely, the employees had stopped at some place and picked the food or picked up groceries and or maybe in their own lunchbox they may have brought it from home anyways and they leave their stuff in the truck while they work all day and the truck is warm and all this food from their trips sitting in there and it creates an environment where there’s lots of places for the roaches to hide and breed and they can thrive very well in that environment especially considering it is kind of like a tropical environment with the heat that it gets to in people’s vehicles so it becomes a natural situation that that becomes easy for them to to thrive in. Now What’s strange about roaches in vehicles is roaches and vehicles are one of the areas that should be to the most part somewhat easy to control, if people just removed the food and drinks and sodas or anything else that that foodwise is sustaining the roach population inside of a vehicle. Now in this case, when we went to this specific store, and we started pulling stuff out, there was a lot of work stuff in the truck. And based on what they do, it was understandable that they were going to have all this stuff in there. But there were also lots of bags from local fast food places with things like french fries, and there were potato chips in the vehicle and, and just leftover food and of course cups was sodas and waters and drinks and sweaty clothing, which sweat does have moisture in it. And all of these things were helping to sustain the roach population in this vehicle. So we went ahead and we treated the vehicle and strangely enough right now here on the Treasure Coast,it appears like we are one of the few companies that people can call and actually come out and do a treatment. Now in their case, this company is did not need to use the vehicle for a weekend. So we went on a Friday afternoon after the vehicle every turn to their shop we treated on Friday afternoon and they weren’t going to be using the vehicle again till Monday. That of course is an ideal situation when the vehicle doesn’t have to be used. But the first thing that I would say is that they they had to have everything cleaned out and they got everything out of the vehicle which was great. All of the work stuff, all personal stuff, everything was cleaned out. So it gave us an opportunity to go in and treat the carpets. Treat behind the seats treat every place where there were no electronic equipment. And then what we had to do is we had to go in and use a roach bait and treat around all of the electrical components. Now most vehicles have actually a lot of electrical components your radio your dashes, your lights, everything specifically behind the steering wheel is pretty much electric components. Now some vehicles have electric components in the seats. And nowadays they run power to the council’s the armrests, even power windows power locks, there are a lot of electrical components. So in those cases, our only option was to put out bait and in a vehicle bathing can be very effective as long as all of the other food is controlled. So once they cleaned everything out and we were able to get in, we were able to treat the truck and as far as we’ve been told two weeks later, the truck is doing much better. Now understand, after only three days, which the trucks that from Friday to Monday, it is possible that some of the roaches could have survived. And if the people continue to leave the vehicle a mess, it is very possible that the roach problem could continue to drag out and drag on. So as we instructed the manager, we said specifically, that vehicle needed to be cleaned out on a regular basis, it needs to be kept very clean. And if possible, the employees needed to find a different way to bring their lunch or take their lunch out of the vehicle every day, take their food out, take their drinks out, leave the vehicle empty. And that was going to assist our treatment for the vehicle immensely. Now, this is kind of a strange conversation to have for a podcast, in my opinion, because we don’t see roaches in vehicles as much as we see him in cars. But just today, we had to take one of our vehicles into a repair shop. And when we were at the repair shop, the manager who came to check in our vehicle was telling us that they had two cars sitting in their lot as of today, and one had been there for three months because they refuse to touch the vehicle until the roaches were under control, they they would not bring the vehicle into the bay to start doing body work for damage that it had occurred because they were not going to risk the roaches getting into their business. And another one they said had been brought in and the people had come and they were cleaning it out and the people were working on it they they said the owners had set off numerous bombs, but that the bombs weren’t getting rid of the roaches. So what it did was it prompted me to realize that between that conversation and a few conversations we’ve had with a few other people have called in lately that the roaches in vehicles can be a real problem.
The other thing that it did was it sparked my memory back to one of my long term customers who had a child who lived at home and the child was an adult child. And strangely enough, he called up one day and he’s like, I need you to come and treat my son’s car, his car is full of roaches. And so we said okay, and we came out and after inquiring what could have led up to the problem, we found out that the son worked in a restaurant. And the restaurant had a very bad roach problem. And what they believed was when the son worked at the restaurant, at the end of the day, they brought in food, they brought food home and they put it in their car and they ate and they brought other things I guess from the store home, I don’t know what and I can’t begin to say hopefully everything they took from the store was what they were allowed to take. But what they were doing was they were carrying stuff out of the store that they knew had a problem, then putting it in the car and bringing it home. And this gentleman had to put a stop to his child to bring anything into the house. Because he didn’t want to take the problem from point A the restaurant to point B the car and then prevent it obviously from getting to point C which has his house. And so these are just some of the examples of what we see where the roaches come from. And the situation kind of things that we do when we have a vehicle that that has a roach problem. And as you hopefully the consumer or a person who may or may not have a problem needs to know is that what is the same cleanliness is next to godliness. And if you use that theory, when you address your car and the fact that you have roaches, what you can do is realize that you yourself can greatly affect the roaches ability to survive and thrive in that environment. When there’s no food when there’s no water when there’s no drinks. And whatever you can do to to help in that. And if that’s still not doing it, you need somebody to come and treat. Please feel free to give us a call at 772-878-1972 or check out our website at WWW dot Penn’s pest stop is and we’ll be happy to do an inspection of your vehicle take a look and make our suggestions and recommendations. What needs to be done to get these crazy things out of your vehicle. So again, this is Ben with Ben’s pest control and thank you for joining me’
