Advice for Someone Looking: How Did You Get Your Self Serve Car Wash?

[scottlee]

I've really be enjoying reading through the historical posts on here - I found this forum by dumb luck and it has been great! I've been wanting to get a self serve car wash for several years but only recently seriously started looking.

I'd like to hear your story - how did you get your first self serve car wash? How long were you looking before you got it? And how do you recommend someone trying to find one should go about it?

I've been trying to find one and I've had limited success. I'm open to buying or leasing and I mostly don't care what condition the building or equipment is in - as long as it is repairable.

I'm physically going to all the car washes around and looking for ones that could use a lot of improvement (bays not working, dirty sites, damaged or missing vacuums, grafitti, etc.) and then I contact the owner of the land (usually via mail unless I see them onsite) and ask if they will sell or lease to me. Haha - I think my letters get thrown out like I throw out the letters wanting to buy my house.

I also look on loopnet, bizbuysell, crexi, and any other website google shows me. I check the websites about once or twice a week but I haven't seen anything added or removed in my area for a while.

 

[Waxman]

try getting a job working for a car wash in your area first. That way you'll find out firsthand what the business is like to operate instead of just relying on your concept of what it will be like. I researched for years before building my new car wash in 2006. I went to a car wash chain about 40 miles away from where I was planning to build my wash. I had a connection and met with the Director of operations for the car wash segment of their business. I offered to work for free to learn the business. They said they would pay me and hired me to work at two different car wash locations. The experience I gained was invaluable and that is why I recommend this approach to all the new investors on this forum.

 

[Bigmatthew86]

I did the opposite of what he’s saying lol. Like you I researched for several months & drove around & left notes or emailed owners. I figured it would be work but it was honestly double. His advice is solid about learning the ropes some. From my experience (5 bay ss since May) I would have replaced everything at the beginning. I chose to work on it while it was running & all the old things started breaking. So unless it’s in amazing shape I’d replace lines, fittings, pumps, & anything else that needs it at the beginning. I don’t regret it but when you’re hauling all the trash off while fixing burst lines & down pumps on your days off from your other job it’s a lot.

 

[scottlee]

try getting a job working for a car wash in your area first. That way you'll find out firsthand what the business is like to operate instead of just relying on your concept of what it will be like. I researched for years before building my new car wash in 2006. I went to a car wash chain about 40 miles away from where I was planning to build my wash. I had a connection and met with the Director of operations for the car wash segment of their business. I offered to work for free to learn the business. They said they would pay me and hired me to work at two different car wash locations. The experience I gained was invaluable and that is why I recommend this approach to all the new investors on this forum.

I like this idea! I'll ask a couple car washes that are an hour away towards my parents house - I could easily help one or two days a week for a while. I'll let you know how it goes!

 

[scottlee]

I did the opposite of what he’s saying lol. Like you I researched for several months & drove around & left notes or emailed owners. I figured it would be work but it was honestly double. His advice is solid about learning the ropes some. From my experience (5 bay ss since May) I would have replaced everything at the beginning. I chose to work on it while it was running & all the old things started breaking. So unless it’s in amazing shape I’d replace lines, fittings, pumps, & anything else that needs it at the beginning. I don’t regret it but when you’re hauling all the trash off while fixing burst lines & down pumps on your days off from your other job it’s a lot.

Haha - Thanks! I think I know how much work I'm getting into and I'm game. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one running around looking for opportunities!

 

[GreenMachine]

If you have the money to burn buy one and after 2 years you will have figured out just about everything there is know. But wax man is right and that’s pretty much what I had to do.

 

[Greg_T]

Well, we did the exact opposite of what everybody would recommend, but it worked out ok....

My wife and I were looking for commercial property to purchase and lease out. When looking around on various websites, a carwash in a town about 20 minutes drive away came up. We enquired about that wash, got some basic financials and decided very, very quickly that it was a bad deal (net profit as % of purchase price was very bad ROI).

A few weeks later I was talking with another local business owner, and he happened to mention that he owned our local carwash, and was looking to sell. I expressed some interest, he gave us some "back of the envelope" financials. After some short consideration, my wife and I decided to give it a go. We didn't consult an accountant, lawyer etc. or any of the smart people that you should engage. We just gave it a go. We had no carwash experience, but some reasonable background in maintenance, mechanical & electrical systems etc.

Things that we did do:

(1) Compare the "back of the envelope" financials against those we received for the first carwash we considered. This gave us some confidence in the numbers, as both were similar size carwashes and had similar income and expense.

(2) Review the numbers with a "common sense" check. As an example, the stated income equated to a little under $200 (Australian) per day, for a small country town carwash. In really rough terms, this would require 30 washes per day at $6-7 each. From my experience of using the wash and driving past it etc, this seemed reasonable. We could also confirm that electrical, water supply etc. seemed reasonable compared to another existing business we operated.

I would certainly not recommend this approach to everyone - it was reasonably high risk, but we did feel confident that if we worked hard and improved the customer experience, that we would make it work out. Initially the results were not quite as good as the "back of the envelope" figures (surprise, surprise). But after 3.5 years we have steadily increased income and steadily reduce expenses to achieve better than what we had expected.

But it required lots of hard work to get there - don't underestimate the effort required to make any small business a success.

Finally, highly recommend that you look at washes close to where you live - in the early days, regular visits will be important to getting issues sorted out, improving systems etc.

 

[sjb]

I would strongly recommend that you own the underlying asset, or you will just be paying someone else’s mortgage…

Best of luck in your hunt!