Pest-Ops: ‘Where science meets service’
Business celebrates 25 years serving community
“I enjoy it as much today as I ever have,” Pest-Ops owner, Kyle Lundy, a board-certified entomologist and certified indoor environmentalist, said about his business.
”We continue to grow, and that’s a great thing.”
Although he has seen many pest control businesses in the area sell to larger national and international firms, Lundy has continued to remain independent.
“Our local competitors are changing very much in this market,” he observed. “There’s only a handful of local businesses in pest control for East Tennessee now. I feel some pride in that” he still is local.
“Pest-Ops isn’t a franchise or a national operation,” Lundy added. “We’ve just got this office.”
Another source of pride came about when two of his three children joined his business.
“I have a son, Mark, that works in the business with me,” Lundy said. “My daughter, Ember, is a high school teacher at West High School, but in the summers she works here in the office.
“So it’s very much a family business,” he added, noting their older brother, Anthony Lundy, is employed at Y-12 as a chemist.
A Farragut resident, Lundy has been in the industry 28 years but started the company in 1995, when he and his family moved to Knoxville, later moving to Farragut.
“I just started from scratch,” he recalled.
Lundy grew up in Kentucky and moved to New Mexico, as his wife has family there.
“We were getting help with our (three) small children” while he attended college, he said.
Lundy’s career started with a summer job with Terminex in New Mexico.
“I developed a real like for (the pest control industry,” he recalled. “Nobody grows up and says, ‘I want to be a bug man or exterminator or whatever,’ but I enjoyed it very much — the science, all of the ecology that’s involved.
“When I started the business, I thought, ‘I have to have a logo, a slogan,’ because you hear slogans and mottos all the time,” Lundy added. “What came to me was ‘where science meets service.’
“That’s been the heart of our business all the way through. I’m an entomologist, and we employ the science of insects to perfect that service. The flip side of that is caring for customers and having that personal touch.”
During training, Lundy discovered he was sensitive to the chemicals used.
So, when he started his own company, “I had to find ways to treat that were green — that did not have pesticides,” he said. “I looked at every home remedy, wife’s tale, everything that was based on plant oils, boric acid or things like that.”
However, Lundy recalled in the early 1990s, East Tennesseans were not interested in green service, so he served hospitals and nursing homes.
“That’s a very demanding task, and we did that with green products,” he said. “We really honed and perfected getting results with green products, and we took all that knowledge, training and experience and (eventually) we brought that to the residential market.”
Through the years, Lundy has seen advances in technology and green products in his profession.
“In 1995, hardly anyone knew what a web browser was,” Lundy said. “We didn’t have e-mail. Not many people had cell phones, and if they did, it was the big brick.
“Technology has changed for all of us,” he added, noting it changed the way he communicates with customers, as well as the technologies of some of the products Pest-Ops has available.
Now, Lundy said there are “target-specific” pesticides he uses that kill certain species.
“So it would be harmful to ants, yet protect spiders and honeybees,” he added. “Non-chemical pesticides have gone a long way. None of that kind of thing was around in the past.”
Pest-Ops’ office is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, but Lundy said his employees are available for emergencies.
For more information or to book an appointment, call 865-966-0750, visit its website at pestops.com or send an e-mail to kyle@pestops.com
