After thoughts from the 2019 Nashville Car Wash Show

[OurTown]

I want to share some random thoughts about the show and want to hear from others about what was different or something you saw that was interesting this year. I should have started this thread a week ago but here we go.

On Sunday night we met with four other forum members for dinner and had a great time. It was nice to put a face to some of the forum members.

We have only been in the business about 2 years and this was our first year for the show. Because of Mrs. Ourtown's work schedule we were barely able to go and only on the first day. In the 7 hours we could not possibly get through the show floor and really see everything we wanted to see. Unless something changes in our life we will not be able to go to San Antonio next year.

We got to meet a lot of people from the companies that we have talked to many times on the phone. It sure is nice to be able to touch and look at carefully in person things that you are interested in buying and can usually only see on the internet. There are several pieces of equipment that we are buying soon that we thought seemed really pricey. After looking them over at the show we can see why they cost so much as some of these things are complex and have a lot of parts to them.

Since it was our first year the show seemed exciting but I bet some of you were a tad bored with it after going year after year. Because the car wash industry is not huge we noticed that so many people knew each other already. We were told that the show used to be a lot larger over ten years ago.

These are just ramblings....

 

[I.B. Washincars]

I enjoyed meeting you guys and how you actually acted like you cared about what I had to say .

I wasn’t really interested in anything in particular, but I really liked that little pole/wall mounted vacuum from JE Adams.

 

[OurTown]

Did Mosmatic have any actual products on display?

 

[Car_Wash_Guy]

I wasn’t really interested in anything in particular, but I really liked that little pole/wall mounted vacuum from JE Adams.

I liked that same setup.

Did Mosmatic have any actual products on display?

Yes. They had a LED SS boom that was nice.

 

[scrubs3]

The license plate recognition program was what caught my attention. It is set up to look at the cars coming to your wash as well as those that pass by your wash which then would allow targeted messaging. I think it has potential in the SS market, not just the express market. The key is finding a marketing company that understands the rules associated with messaging people with license plate technology. Suds was the only vendor that could do this at the wash.

 

[scrubs3]

And got a nice photo with Denny McLain, last pitcher to be a 30 game winner. Being from Detroit originally, getting the photo and being able to talk "old school" baseball with him for about 15 minutes was awesome.

 

[sparkey]

The license plate recognition program was what caught my attention. It is set up to look at the cars coming to your wash as well as those that pass by your wash which then would allow targeted messaging. I think it has potential in the SS market, not just the express market. The key is finding a marketing company that understands the rules associated with messaging people with license plate technology. Suds was the only vendor that could do this at the wash.

How could this possibly be of any use? In Ohio its almost impossible to use a license plate number to get any kind of contact information. There is a pay website that claims to have this information but the information is so outdated its useless.

 

[MEP001]

I've used that website - IIRC it specifies that in Texas I cannot use the info from the site to contact them.

 

[br549ms]

Unless it recently dropped in price, the systems designed for carwash industry are 10k plus.
There are other systems much less that could be adapted for our needs. The newer software packages can store thousands of license plates numbers that you can then target a customer when they arrive at your location, member or not. You could also be notified if a particular problem customer arrives.

 

[mjwalsh]

License plate info can be helpful but if I remember right the late Kevin Reilly or someone similar posted in the past about close up images from a pin hole close proximity camera can be even more effective ... just thinking out loud. Combine that with facial recognition database considerations ... I wonder if that can be a future good thing to hold the criminals accountable & more importantly to stop them from the horrific repeats if not caught???

We had a rare 4 person homicide recently in our area on a property management team Mandan, ND RJR Prop. The small town (nearby Washburn) highly reputable chiropractor suspect made sure his license plate was not the deciding factor in his very much needed arrest ... go figure.

I am not advocating unbridled use of such brave new world capabilities but ....

BTW ... my dear late father was a lifetime peace officers association member ... yet he was a very freedom loving person ...

 

[PEI]

I use to go to the show every 3 or 4 years and was always amazed at the new stuff on display. Now I go every year and it seems like there are only a couple of new things to see each year, but I don't go for the equipment anymore. Now I go for the people. What I learn from talking with others has proved far more beneficial than what I see on the showroom floor. The conversations I have on the showroom floor, at vendor parties, and even while traveling has saved me several hundreds of thousands of dollars and prevented countless headaches.

The show may seem smaller because with consolidation there are fewer vendors. There are also fewer operators from overseas now that the ICA has shows in Europe and Asia.

Finally, the thing that I found most interesting was Superior Control Systems display. The robot was kind of cool, but the system that allowed it to see the wheel and make changes based on that information was even better. Technology like that and ICS's Entry Arch (that could create a virtual vehicle for the car wash's computer) means that going forward the equipment will know what kind of vehicle it is washing, how long it is, where the wheel wells and tires are, does it have window shades, even what is in a pickups bed. With this information the equipment can then take the appropriate action.

 

[scrubs3]

How could this possibly be of any use? In Ohio its almost impossible to use a license plate number to get any kind of contact information. There is a pay website that claims to have this information but the information is so outdated its useless.

Investigating to see if it is legit or not much info. They claim to be able to get info to contact people. I am not up to date on what is/is not collected for license plates, but as I stated, caught my eye at the show.

 

[scrubs3]

Unless it recently dropped in price, the systems designed for carwash industry are 10k plus.
There are other systems much less that could be adapted for our needs. The newer software packages can store thousands of license plates numbers that you can then target a customer when they arrive at your location, member or not. You could also be notified if a particular problem customer arrives.

Quote was $500/month which included 2 cameras mounted by the company. Not cheap, but more targeted marketing.

 

[br549ms]

Quote was $500/month which included 2 cameras mounted by the company. Not cheap, but more targeted marketing.

No upfront cost?

 

[scrubs3]

No upfront cost?

I was told $500/month for a year, then it goes down after that. No upfront costs, but the data you get needs to be handled by a firm that specializes in this. My was is in FL and was told that this is allowed here.

 

[MEP001]

I would look into that company since the site I used says it's illegal to contact people directly with the info obtained from the site.

Also, fwiw, I have some really old PC-based DVR cards that include OCR that only cost about $40. If you can put something like this together yourself for under $1000 you'll be money ahead by the third month.