A Tale of Two Washes

What you put into your business determines what you’ll get out of it

At one point, business was rather good for two competing small-town carwashes that opened around the same time in 1985. This was before gas stations started building convenient in-bay automatics on every corner and local consumers had more than two professional carwash options competing for their dollars.

Still, both wash owners, Charlie and Dan, experienced several years of growth and profits, and each enjoyed the fruits of his labor by purchasing luxury items and taking nice family vacations every year.

There were, however, significant differences in how each approached their operations. Dan, for example, spent a small part of every week working through a checklist, administering water titration tests, cleaning down the walls in each bay, and running every piece of equipment to check for irregularities. When repairs were needed, Dan often purchased extra parts and kept a few spares on hand for various valves, gaskets and hoses. He found he could maximize his uptime if he already had replacements onsite for parts that regularly wore out.

Dan contacted his local distributor once a year to find out if any part recalls had been issued for the equipment he owned. He made sure preventive maintenance was done and upgraded any components as needed.

As a result, Dan’s wash had very little downtime and customers appreciated the site’s cleanliness and attention to detail. Dan didn’t mind the occasional expense for maintaining his equipment, upgrading to better coin acceptors and timers, and replacing decals when they started to fade or peel. He considered these a part of doing business and was always on the lookout for the “next big thing” to improve his operation and customer experience.

Charlie ran his carwash a bit differently. After building his wash, Charlie’s goal was to squeeze every drop of profit out of his location and made repairs only when absolutely necessary. It wasn’t uncommon for customers to see at least one “Out of Service” sign taped to the front of a meter box or coin acceptor somewhere on the property.

Charlie sprayed down his bays and was pretty good about keeping his pits from overflowing too often, although there were a few instances that lead to some expensive service calls. Despite these maintenance problems, Charlie made good money because he kept his expenses to a bare minimum.

It took about 10 years before the disparity in their business philosophies began to really reveal the differences in the operation, appearance and performance of the two carwashes. By the winter of 1996, Dan’s carwash had shown growth every year since it opened. Charlie, on the other hand, ran into some tough times after several major equipment failures forced him to close two of his four bays for more than a month at a time.

Closing bays for emergency repairs had become an all-too-frequent occurrence for Charlie. When the salt started hitting the winter roads, local customers began frequenting Charlie’s location less and less in favor of his competitor’s wash.

Customers marveled at the cleanliness of Dan’s location and often commented that they appreciated many of the upgrades he put into his carwash.

In his decade in business, Dan had added several extra vacuum islands, a shampoo machine, and a really nice rug beater machine to his lineup of services. He made it a point every few years to add or upgrade a service on-site. His regular maintenance schedule and dedication to minor repairs yielded more production out of his equipment than Charlie’s and kept his wash running with minimal downtime.

Dan believed he needed to treat his carwash like a professional business and, thus, was a member of his local carwash association, participated in educational seminars and kept his eye out for new products that could be retrofitted into the business to make it better. City officials offered to sign a fleet contract with Dan if he implemented a PO system, so he took out a small business loan with his local bank and purchased a fleet management card system.

The additional revenue from the new fleet business easily covered his loan payments, and Dan’s wash became so popular with city employees that they started washing their personal vehicles at the wash once they got set up with a loyalty card of their own.

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