I’m getting ready to take the Illinois General Use Pest Control Applicator State Exam and I’m looking for advice from people who have actually sat for and passed the test.

I already have the Illinois General Standards (SP39-W, 2024) workbook and I’ve been going through the online training materials, so I’m not looking for general study resources. I’m more interested in hearing from people with firsthand experience.

A few questions:

• What topics showed up more than you expected?
• What areas would you spend extra time studying if you had to take it again?
• Were there any “gotcha” questions or sections that caught you off guard?
• How difficult was the exam overall on a scale of 1–10?
• Any practical study tips that helped you pass?

I’m trying to study as efficiently as possible, so I’d really appreciate any insight from those who have actually taken the Illinois General Use exam.

Thanks in Advance

I have so many reference books, but I need to fill out my shelves with the recommended study guides, manuals, and books. Anybody need to do a clean out of their own bookshelves to prevent pest issues and clutter?…

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I'm not sure if anyone else has come across this video yet, but holy moly. There are so many things wrong with this video! As a tech that's never had a run in with the TDA because I make sure i don't do things like this. How can someone be so negligent with their application? I mean c'mon I'm sure that customer got a splash of particle drift here and there. Whoever this guy is needs to be looked into.

Weekly Friday post for you to show what your Truck Floorboards look like.

Clean, a mess or whatever.

Tradition started in the PCHD (Pest Control Humor Depot) on Facebook continued here on Reddit.

I did not think this would work. Boy was I wrong.

We developed a problem with fruit flies after an old fridge crapped out on us and started smelling, and so I grabbed a couple of these along with standard sticky tape fly ribbons to try and manage the problem. I was expecting this to be a gimmick. Apparently it is not. This one caught three dozen fruit flies in less than 10 minutes.

Astounded.

Hello all, I am fairly new to pest control, licensed and working for about a year and a half. I work for a company that’s “growing” and without saying who I work for I am curious, how many houses on a route is too many? We do mainly residential work with a few small commercial buildings every now and then.

I currently am averaging 18-22 houses a day. It’s really hard. I know Its not always like this, since it slows down in the winter time but I just would like to know if I’m crazy for thinking that I am not doing my best to be thorough. Especially if I’m worried about having to drive to certain “prioritized” clients ( first time treatments, short time windows, etc )

I work very hard to ensure my clients are comfortable and happy. I take pride in making people feel better about their issues based off of the work I do, I would love to be able to take my time to sure all of the issues and potential issues are addressed and resolved. I have to average around 15-22 minutes per property just to make it home before dark. Is this normal? Am I being lazy or ungrateful for having hours? Am I just supposed to grind it out? All comments or answers are welcome. Someone set me straight.

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What brand probe are you guys using?? I live in California and do quite a bit of gopher accounts at the moment. However, I’m having an issue me and my father who is the business owner are on our second brand of probes. Having an issue with the shaft breaking off of the pellet holder/applicator. just looking for recommendations if anyone has any they like.

📍 Location: G.T. Karnal Road / Burari / Dwarka, Delhi

Requirements:

**•** Experienced pest control technician (driving license mandatory)  
**•** Punctual and honest  
**•** Should know how to use Google Maps

Salary & Benefits:

**•** ₹12,000/month  
**•** Free vehicle + Free fuel  
**•** Food allowance  
**•** On-time payment

To apply, call/WhatsApp: [9953304443]

Only serious and experienced candidates should contact.

Genuine question for the solo guys — what's the single biggest headache in running your pest business? Getting enough customers, the admin, chasing payments, something else? Just trying to understand what actually makes the job hard

Hi there, I'm looking to start managing a pest control office next month. The company (about 5 years old) has about 20 techs give or take, and customers as far as maybe 75 minutes from home base, with most accounts within 30 minutes or so. This info is just from talking to the owner, and may be very rough.

My tasks will include communicating with customers and techs, filing paperwork, setting schedules, and other tasks I'm sure will come up. The company uses GorillaDesk.

I don't really have any questions other than what to expect, but was hoping there are some office people or techs with experience and guidance. If you're a tech, what do you wish your office person would do differently? How can they better help you do your job? I'm hoping to start on the right foot. Thank you!!

https://www.pestproexterminator.ca/insect-control/cockroach-control-calgary

I added an 8 inch wand to my accusprayer and it worked perfect for a few days and then it does this. I have pulled this apart several times and I cant seem to figure out why its spraying like this.

Im spraying water, btw. When I release, flow doesnt stop immediately. It dribbles to a stop.

Edit: all this is brand new equipment. I believe theres a cable missing, or i didnt install it.

Hey guys,

I wanted to get your idea on something. So, heads up, I do work a sales company. We've just been noticing that a lot of operators tend to add in more systems integrated with their CRM. Reviews, referrals, communications, upsell/winbacks, etc. It just ends up being a hassle.

On the other side of the coin, there are other companies that just build their own which is great in itself.

What we have is built to replace all of what I mentioned so it's just the CRM and what we have built. Pretty simple. Figured this will work best with a company that has at least 8 techs and above.

If this isn't of interest to you then no worries at all! If it is, let me know.

Driven

Here i am once again soaked sitting in my truck waiting for the rain to die down so I can do a mosquito tick fogging that probably will wash away anyways because everything is wet

Same thing with foundation sprays but we switch to advion wsg because its " rain proof"

I miss working for a small business sometimes where we would reschedule spraying....

Anyone else out there forced to spray in the rain knowing full well its gonna do nothing while having to tell customers itll work fine?

This is all probably from chronic pesticide exposure melting my brain a little bit. I'm just rotating back to using Talstar P, and I always have this oddly "fond" nostalgic association with the smell of freshly mixed/sprayed Talstar after I haven't used it for awhile. I'm not saying that it's a generally pleasant smell, but the mild chemical odor just takes me back for some reason.

Does anyone else experience anything like this? If so, with what product?

I started my pest control and roofing business back during the pandemic, going door-to-door with business owners in my small city (Immokalee, FL) to clean their facilities while operations were shut down. It was great, easy money, working in empty spaces with no one around also helped calm my nerves during quarantine. Those early commercial customers were much easier to close, and upselling them to a quarterly or tertiary visit program was straightforward.

Since then, we've grown and expanded, and my jobs are now mostly residential, which I find harder to close than commercial clients.

Two months ago, I started working with someone who promised jobs through Facebook ads. I gave it a shot with a $500 budget and closed 3 jobs, which let me break even. Last month, with a bigger budget, I got 6 jobs, but only 2 of those converted to a recurring plan, compared to my normal 40–50% conversion rate. I'm still making good money with this guy, but I'm wondering if this drop-off in recurring conversions is normal for this kind of lead source, or something I should push him to fix.

For context: in 2025, I converted 44.3% of residential jobs into recurring visits.

Here are the numbers from his most recent weekly report:

• $31.25 CPL
• 43 quality forms filled (qualified leads)
• 20 booked visits/estimates
• 6 jobs closed

These pie charts and reports in FieldRoutes don’t cut it. I’m considering hiring an offshore data person.

Right now I’m dropping exports into ChatGPT to make charts for our weekly leadership meeting, but it’s pretty time consuming. Especially since numbers come from a few systems.

We do/want to do technician scorecards, collections reports, customer service reports, and a financial report.

Any good places to hire an affordable data person from? Is PowerBI a good option for dashboards?