FROM THE FIELD: A Sticky Subject?

You spend a lot of money just to send your lawn care technicians out on their routes. Trucks, salaries, benefits, insurance, sales materials, fuel and products, just to name a few expenses. And, like any savvy business manager, you continually evaluate these costs to find opportunities for savings, right?
 
We all recognize the costs associated with putting products on your lawn care technicians’ trucks. Whether it’s fertilizer, herbicides, insecticides or fungicides, you understand the need to purchase quality products that deliver customer-pleasing results. Maybe there should be another product on those trucks, particularly for liquid applications, to make them even more profitable.

MAX IMPACT.  Profit is about minimizing the expenses necessary to generate maximum revenue. One of the most costly, not to mention frustrating, costs for lawn care jobs is callbacks. A single callback can eliminate the profit generated by two or three visits to a property.
 
That’s where products called surfactants, also known as spreader/stickers, can be valuable assets. Unfortunately, many companies miss the opportunity to enhance application performance as well as customer satisfaction because they don’t understand these products. Here’s what you need to know.
 
Surfactants improve spray applications’ effectiveness by providing more uniform coverage of the spray on the plant to maximize the amount of the application in contact with the plant surface. The plant takes up more of the application and absorbs the active ingredient more quickly, thereby increasing performance and delivering maximum results.
 
What happens when you include a surfactant or spreader/sticker in your tank mixture is that a drop of the spray solution has less tension with the plant leaf, so it spreads out, covers and penetrates more of the leaf. More contact with the plant surface translates into improved control, less wasted product and fewer callbacks.

NOW WHAT? Lawn care companies have a tremendous range of products they can purchase, and some sound more impressive than they probably are. Data backs up the value of surfactants. In fact, a 2001 University of Florida study showed an application of an acephate product with a soil surfactant increased control of mole crickets from 87 to nearly 100 percent, compared to a straight acephate application. A soil surfactant helps a product move through a thatch layer and into the soil, thereby increasing effectiveness for some applications.
 
Clearly, the argument for using surfactants is strong. That’s not to say, however, that they make sense in all applications. Some jobs are ideal candidates, and they include:

• Sensitive herbicide applications requiring excellent coverage
• Insecticide treatments where enhanced spray coverage increases the likelihood of contact with a mobile target pest
• Fungicide applications on hard-to-wet surfaces that require complete coverage

Plus, surfactants don’t add much to your cost of application. Consider that most are available for less than $50 for a half gallon, which is usually enough for 200 gallons of spray application and will cover most lawn care technicians for an entire day. The cost of the surfactant is minimal enough on a per-lawn basis that it can often be passed along to the customer.
 
As the old adage tells us, sometimes you have to spend money to make money.