Battling Cockroaches on All Fronts

Ask anyone in the 97% of pest management companies that offer cockroach services to describe this challenging pest, and you’re likely to get not just descriptors but also horror stories, because these little scrappers can cause a lot of mayhem. They reproduce faster than any other household pest; they can live on a diet of grease, garbage, cardboard, dead skin, fingernails or feces. They are so hardy that people still wonder if the myth is true: Could cockroaches survive a nuclear attack?

The answer is a qualified no, but still, cockroaches can truly put your service technicians to the test.

“It always seems like they’re a step ahead, so we need to be two or three steps ahead to beat them,” said Dennis Weiss, technical supervisor at Saela Pest Control in Orem, Utah. “When I put out a roach bait, I’m already thinking, What happens when they inevitably stop eating it? Where will I go from there?”

Fortunately, there are a lot of baiting and treatment options for managing cockroach infestations. We’ll talk about some of those in the following pages, along with results from the 2026 PCT State of the Cockroach Control Market survey. This annual report lets you know what kind of pests your peers are managing and what they’re using to maintain control.