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"Expert" is a loosely used term in this industry...

A

AnalyticWash

Well-known member
Has it always been this way?

I feel like distributors are flying by the seat of their pants on everything recently.

Anyone else seeing this?
 
I am happy with Kleen Rite. When I make a mistake, or when they make a mistake, getting it solved has always been a breeze. A flaw I see with Kleen Rite is that their website has always been a cumbersome load.

Washtech (before it got absorbed by Harrell's and later Sonny's) was a pain to deal with. Don Jones handled parts. When you ordered parts, Don would send them when he felt like it. I did not shed a tear when Harrell's took over and let Don go. From a distributing perspective, Harrell's and later Sonny's were a big-time improvements over Washtech.

I could go on and on about non-distributor entities and people in the car wash business. I would start with Washtech with that as well.
 
I understand that some areas, especially the mid west, have limited choices for service. It been a long, long held belief on this forum that it isn’t “who has the best equipment?” but “who has the best distributor?” A good service tech can make a poorly designed machine preform well.
I was fortunate to have a great mentor when I started in this business in 1999. He passed away in 2005. This forum filled in a lot of the blank areas over the years. Now I have a great distributor in Autowash Maintenance. Fortunately, I have a few other great service companies I could choose from. Unfortunately, the majority of the techs are older than I am. I’m not sure the young guys have the opportunity to learn the needed skills as the older guys age out and retire.
 
I use Autowash Maintenance as well. And I honestly find them to be pretty amazing. The technicians I have worked with are very knowledgeable , helpful and easy to work with. it was like night and day for me when I bought my new equipment through Autowash Maintenance. I felt like I could finally relax a little bit and enjoy the car wash business without the stress of constant breakdowns and repairs. Those things really took the fun out of owning an automatic car wash. Now I feel like the business is enjoyable for me. You can't really put a price tag on that.
 
I've known Ronnie and the folks at Autowash Maintenance for years. Full disclosure: They are a full line distributor of ours. That being said, they know their stuff and are not going to blow sunshine up your rear.

The recent consolidation of distribution has improved several issues but it's also let to a huge problem, IMHO, and that is the loss of a lot of good, experienced techs. I can think of a long list of techs who were low-balled or outright let go when distributors were bought. A few have gone out on their own but most have left the industry. It's pretty routine for me to get calls from "techs" who are at a site and it's pretty apparent they have little to no knowledge of what they are even looking at let alone how to fix it and have little to no training. I hope they can stick around long enough to gain the experience and knowledge they need.
 
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