soapy
Senior Member
It seems like everytime I take a trip I go out of my way to check out car washes along the way. It is always good to get a different perspective on things. I love to pull into and wash that has someone working around it so I can shoot the breeze with them. Yesterday at one such wash I had a good long talk with the attendant. This wash is located in a nice sunny valley north of Vegas. It has a population base of over 20,000 people and is the only wash within 40 miles. It has one automatic and 3 SS bays. It is the only game in town and over the last 5 years I have watched it pretty close. The wash stays very busy as the valley is also a hot tourist destination for off road activities and fishing access to Lake Mead. For the last couple of months I have noticed that the automatic wash has been shut down with a sign that says " Closed in need of major repairs" The automatic was replaced only 2 years ago and from what I have seen always stayed busy with lines on the weekends and good business during the week. I would guess it easily gets 1500 to 2000 cars per month through it. I guessed that someone must have run into the machine and severly damaged it. Turns out that all that is wrong with it was that some swivels were leaking and needed replaced. The owner of the wash also owns a gas station right next to it. The wash itself is in a building that has a bank and a pizza shop. He has several income streams on this property. He was unhappy that he might have to put a couple of thousand dollars back into the wash so he had let it just sit. SO for 2 months it sat loosing a income stream of 10 to 20 thousand dollars. I think most members of this forum know that the equipment has to stay up and running to make any money. We should all realize that money has to be put back into our washes to maintain the quality and that you can not just let it ride and stay profitable. Don't loose focus on the overall picture and keep everything working. Probably the factor that there is no competition has kept this wash from being on its toes. Competition is a good thing that makes us a better business.
