I'm new to the whole car wash industry but am looking to purchase my first car was. The location I am looking to purchase has 4 self-service bays, one automatic touchless bay, and what I would consider to be a soft-touch automatic bay (if that is the right term). The current owner has employees working there about 80 hours a week at $10 or $11 an hour. That seems like a large amount of hours to me but I could be mistaken. Is that normal for a was this size?
Employees per location
- Thread starter tncarwash
- Start date
dukeofsuds
Member
Not a lot of info to go on there. Do you mean 80 hours of total manpower a week? It depends on the model. Some prefer to have someone on site during the peak hours busy time coverage. E.g. 9-9. That's 12 x 7 = 84 hours.
Some prefer to go unattended. There are pros/cons, and it depends on your equipment, etc. If you go that route, you probably need someone on site to clean and do small maintenance about 40 hours a week (plus someone to cover if there's a problem and a call comes in. You need to do that even for the top attended route, but you've got more coverage to play with. The 30-40 hours in the unattended model will probably be your least busy days so you can get things done.
Your question is basic, that's a basic answer.
Some prefer to go unattended. There are pros/cons, and it depends on your equipment, etc. If you go that route, you probably need someone on site to clean and do small maintenance about 40 hours a week (plus someone to cover if there's a problem and a call comes in. You need to do that even for the top attended route, but you've got more coverage to play with. The 30-40 hours in the unattended model will probably be your least busy days so you can get things done.
Your question is basic, that's a basic answer.
I have no employees.
I have a cleaning crew that comes in daily on contract, and I'm on site 3x a week, totalling about 12 hours. The cleaning crew will do really minute repairs like vac handles and will alert me if there are real problems.
I don't think that's enough time, but its doable. I don't think you can get by less than that.
I could raise my prices if I had more employees, so I think that's also the real question to ask... What is your niche?
A $11/hr employee costs $16 or so an hour, and finding good help us tough. Lots of turnover. So 80 hours at $16 runs you about 1280 bucks a week. That costs you over $5000/month. I think about how much price increase and volume increase it would take me to cover 5 Grand a month. I know my customers and I don't think they'd pay for it.
There's one other car wash close by and they are insanely expensive, but have a full staff.
I realized I can't compete with them on quality, so I picked the low cost model. My customers tell me they are happy, but they are more forgiving of equipment being down or whatnot... They tell me that. I can't disclose the details of that car wash but I got the financials when I was looking to buy car washes. All I can say safely is they make a lot more revenue than me, but they don't make more profit...
So what's your niche? What's your volume? What's your neighborhood like? How much time are you putting into it?
I have a cleaning crew that comes in daily on contract, and I'm on site 3x a week, totalling about 12 hours. The cleaning crew will do really minute repairs like vac handles and will alert me if there are real problems.
I don't think that's enough time, but its doable. I don't think you can get by less than that.
I could raise my prices if I had more employees, so I think that's also the real question to ask... What is your niche?
A $11/hr employee costs $16 or so an hour, and finding good help us tough. Lots of turnover. So 80 hours at $16 runs you about 1280 bucks a week. That costs you over $5000/month. I think about how much price increase and volume increase it would take me to cover 5 Grand a month. I know my customers and I don't think they'd pay for it.
There's one other car wash close by and they are insanely expensive, but have a full staff.
I realized I can't compete with them on quality, so I picked the low cost model. My customers tell me they are happy, but they are more forgiving of equipment being down or whatnot... They tell me that. I can't disclose the details of that car wash but I got the financials when I was looking to buy car washes. All I can say safely is they make a lot more revenue than me, but they don't make more profit...
So what's your niche? What's your volume? What's your neighborhood like? How much time are you putting into it?
soonermajic
Well-known member
I'd put the best employee in front of the touchless & have him pre wash/prep vehicles all day + help customers & do as much maintenance as possible.
GoBuckeyes
Self-Serve and Automatics
TNCarwash, I would say a wash like that needs about 2-3 hours of work a day. What it really needs is that time split between morning and afternoon. Clean up and check equipment in the morning...clean up and check equipment in the afternoon. If you hit it only once a day a customer can pull in as you pull out and trash it leaving it looking like a garbage dump until the next day. We have 7 washes and until a few months ago we ran them with 4 employees which includes myself. Now we have 5 total which is overkill a lot of time but gives me more flexibility with vacations, scheduling etc. Half of our washes are serviced once a day, the others twice. If I had only one wash and I had to pay 80 hours/week in labor I would be an angry guy. We probably operate more like Cityview does.
The main thing these employees are doing is pepping the cars before they pull into the soft touch. Would you all say that is necessary on soft touch bays or is that something that most places could live without?
soonermajic
Well-known member
I have a full-time employee who runs 2 carwashes, he is in front of my touchless ALL DAY, 6 days/week. He works about 50 hrs/week. he preps about 35 cpd. I think 1 of the big advantages of Soft Touch is not needing a prepper.
