Thomas Harris does not hand the phone off. The president of Uinta Pest Solutions picks it up himself, Saturday mornings included, and he says the company’s standard starts with him.
“We answer the phone, we show up, and we’re going to do what we say we’re going to do,” he says.
He keeps a number on the second part. By his count, his technicians arrive on time for about 95 percent of appointments. “I would say the biggest thing we do is we actually show up,” he says.
Harris learned the trade from the other side of that promise. He sold everything, took a technician’s job with a big pest control company and moved across the country to start it. He spent about seven years doing the work for somebody else before starting his own company, which has operated out of Sandy since 2021. He counts 11 or 12 years in the industry.
Those years on someone else’s route shaped what he asks of his own crews. He does not describe the job as the center of anyone’s life. “Everybody come to work, everybody do their job, go home and be a better dad or mom or husband, father, mother,” he says. “Just be better at your personal life than you are at work.”
One homeowner with gophers in his yard described the company’s approach in a review. He had contacted several outfits, and Uinta’s office was the one that asked questions before offering anything. The owner came out the same day to work out which solution fit the property, rearranging his own schedule to get there. A technician later treated the yard and went over the job with the homeowner when he finished.
The work splits about evenly between homes and businesses, “a true 50-50 split,” Harris says, though he expects commercial accounts to become the focus. Crews cover the Salt Lake Valley and towns along the Wasatch Front. The calls run from spiders and wasps to rodents and bed bugs, which the company treats with heat.
Harris arrived in Utah as somebody’s employee. Now the company is his, and he has no interest in cashing out.
“Oh, grow it,” he says. “No point in selling yet.”