Q: While it’s not everybody’s favorite subject to talk about, pests can easily find a home in just about any facility, from manufacturing plants to transportation hubs and distribution centers. How serious a threat do rodents and insects pose for these types of operations?
A: The problems can vary based on the type of product that’s being moved around. In logistics, you can have very sensitive materials such as foods and pharmaceuticals, that can be contaminated and potentially destroyed by pests. But rodents pose a threat to other types of goods as well—for instance, they can damage a product’s packaging, making it effectively unsaleable.
Anybody who’s in the logistics space should be concerned. While pests can move on their own, they are often inadvertently moved [into plants and DCs] by us while we’re transporting all these other products, equipment, and materials around.
Q: What types of pests are most troublesome and most prevalent in logistics facilities?
A: Rodents are among the most common types of pests found in warehouses and distribution facilities. Typically, we’re talking about Norway rats, roof rats, or house mice. Those are the big three kinds of commensal rodents [those that live in close association with humans, sharing their food and resources] that love to be in and around human development and readily take advantage of an area like a logistics facility. They can survive by moving inside of things like pallets of dog food or grass seed. If it’s edible, they can probably survive on it. Warehouses are huge, and tracking down an animal that can think and learn through its environments can be very challenging.
On the insect side, these pests often get moved in a shipment that is contaminated and placed inside a logistics facility or stored in a warehouse. Then you have an Indian meal moth problem or various weevil problems that can lead to the contamination of foodstuffs or other products. We also see birds that get into facilities, but they’re not readily moved through the transport chain. They simply come into facilities through doors and openings.
Q: We’re now entering the summer months. Is there some seasonality in the types of pests that are getting into facilities? Are insects more prevalent in a facility when it’s warm outside? Is winter more of a problem time for rodents looking for a warm environment?
A: It can definitely vary by season. For instance, most insects are ectotherms: They require temperature and humidity to be at specific levels to support their life cycles. And so we definitely see more insect pests in the summer months.
In warmer months, a pest can live in the spillage inside of a trailer and survive in that ambient temperature, whereas it would not be able to survive in that trailer during the winter months. Insects are always going to be more prevalent in the summer months.
It varies a little bit on the rodent side. The three species of commensal rodents I mentioned essentially breed throughout the year. They survive based on how materials are being shipped and stored, and so I like to pick grass seed as an example. Grass seed that sits outside through the winter months is a great place for a mouse to set up shop. And that grass seed that’s been sitting outside now is getting shipped into a facility—a warm place where that mouse can thrive at all times of the year.
Q: What kinds of damage can insects and rodents do within a logistics facility?
A: Damage can occur in a variety of ways, depending on whether it’s a food-based product, a pharmaceutical, or even animal feed. Sometimes, the insects or rodents simply eat and contaminate materials—especially foodstuffs. But they can also pick up and bring in other pathogens, such as a fungus or a weevil that can spoil grain products like oatmeal, making them unfit for consumption.
There is also the potential for more serious concerns with rodents, which can spread the disease leptospirosis through their urine and feces. In addition, rodents can easily pick up salmonella or e. coli on their bodies and transfer the bacteria to food products. That’s why it’s a big concern if they get into a facility and into the areas where products are stored.
From a structural side, rodents chew on all kinds of different things. And so, when they’re looking for places to nest, they can get into wiring and HVAC systems and cause other problems. All of these pests can also create areas where employees don’t want to work. For example, you might have a forklift driver who has to go pick product but doesn’t want to go down Aisle 14 because there are rats down there. Or they don’t want to move that pallet, because the last time they did, moths swarmed all over the place. So it can impact both the facility and the employees who work there. Keeping everybody safe and happy is one of the goals that I know everybody shares, and so that’s certainly something that we look to try and help manage.
Q: Some of these pests can multiply surprisingly quickly. How big a problem is that?
A: I like to tell folks that resources drive reproduction with most of the pests we deal with. And inside of a lot of warehousing facilities, we have put everything they would ever want within arm’s reach. The environment is temperature-controlled, and they’ve got food and water sources readily available—though some of these species, including mice, don’t even need a ready water source. And so, ignoring it or hoping it will go away is only going to lead to a much larger issue in the very near future.
Mice, for example, have litters every three weeks once they’re sexually mature, and it only takes four to five weeks before they’re ready to reproduce. So just a handful of mice can potentially become several hundred when they’ve got all the resources they could ever want inside of a facility.
The same thing happens on a much larger scale with a lot of the insects. It is super important to understand that if you start to have issues, it’s something that needs to be managed. Nobody wants to deal with it—that’s why pest control exists as an industry, right?
Q: What are some simple things managers can do to prevent pests from entering and taking up residence in our facilities?
A: That’s what we work to emphasize—taking an active role. Do you have an inspection process when you’re bringing in products? What is the protocol to deal with a load that turns out to be contaminated? For example, if a load is coming off of a trailer at the dock door and you discover it’s harboring mice, then it needs to go back on the trailer, moved away from the building, and secured—ideally in a specific quarantine area—until it can be dealt with.
Another big thing they can do is cut off access to resources like food and water. For example, food products can often be damaged as they are moved around in a warehouse, and then you get spillage. So what’s the sanitation protocol inside of the facility? It may not be super obvious if you have spillage underneath racking. And if there’s no process to clean under those racks, then you’re just allowing for a really great food resource to exist. All it takes is that introduction.
Once they’re in, they’ve got everything they need to survive right there. So having a really good sanitation process is a key component to managing pests. Make sure the area is clean. If it’s really clean, then it’s very unlikely that a pest is going to be able to set up shop.
And then the last piece of advice I have is to really look at facility maintenance as a whole. Maybe there’s a leak in a very large warehouse, but it’s in a contained area and not damaging any product. We’ll have to deal with it eventually. But that’s an opening where water—one of the key resources—can get in.
Likewise, larger openings that could potentially allow pests to enter should be addressed sooner rather than later. It takes educating all of the employees and making sure everybody is aware of the impact of all these things I just mentioned. And if there’s an actual pest sighting, how does the reporting go? How do I alert somebody so that this issue gets addressed very early on? The sooner it gets addressed, the more manageable it will be. What you don’t want to do is let it grow in the shadows.
Q: I was surprised to learn that a lot of pests get into buildings by squeezing in where utility lines enter. Also surprising is that a mouse can get through a hole that’s smaller than a dime and a rat can enter through a space that’s smaller than a quarter. So it seems there’d be ample opportunity for them to infiltrate a facility.
A: Absolutely, and that’s one of the things that we often look at, especially with rodents. Many look bigger than they are with their fur, right? With most of your vertebrates, if they can get their head through an opening, the rest of the body will almost always follow. Mice are very small, and they just need to get their head into an opening underneath a door or around electrical or conduit lines that aren’t sealed properly at the point of entry. So as you do a facility inspection, you need to adopt the mindset of a mouse—Where could it get in? Where are these access points? And then, what can we do to address them?
There are specialized door sweeps that can be installed to not only secure bay doors but also prevent rodents from chewing through them. There are different types of materials that can be used to successfully stop rodents from chewing through seals and other materials in and around utility line openings. To ultimately manage that problem, it’s important to have someone with specialized knowledge inspect the property and advise you on what materials would be best to use to ensure that you don’t have continuing issues.
Q: You mentioned inspecting products for evidence of rodent or insect infestation as they come into the facility. But what about the converse? How do we avoid exporting our pests to other facilities? We certainly don’t want to ship pests to our customers.
A: Yes. Having a good monitoring system in place is always good. Are you inspecting entire pallets or breaking pallets down? What is getting pulled from the floor, and how is it getting packaged? Take the time to educate the people who are doing the work in those areas. This bag of dog food has a little hole in it. That’s strange. Could that mean a mouse has gotten into it? What do I do with that bag of dog food now?
It goes back to training and having a robust reporting process to ensure that when somebody sees something, there’s action that gets attached to it.
You also may need to justify the value of a pest program. For instance, it might cost $20,000 to seal up all of your doors. But if you lost $30,000 worth of product last month because you had issues with pests, it starts to justify itself. That’s one of the things we always encourage folks to do—to consider the hidden costs of pest damage. You don’t want to be responsible for shipping that bag of dog food that’s harboring a mouse to the end-user. So it is super important to understand and take ownership of what’s within a facility and then have processes in place to ensure that the quality of the products is maintained throughout.
