I want to hear your stories

[wyatt]

I'm always curious how people start out...

How did you get into the car wash business?

What attracted you to buy your first one?

How much was your first wash and how did you get up the courage to take the dive and buy your first wash?

What was the financial stats of your first property? Was it a fixer upper or was it already performing?

Did you have existing experience?


I like hearing how people got their first start.

 

[I.B. Washincars]

I'm second generation. The first SS wash in our area was built attached to my dad's Shell station in 1969. I was 11 years old then. A few years later, he and a partner built another wash. In 1985 he encouraged me to buy out his partner. I didn't have two nickels to rub together, but his partner was a great guy and priced it very reasonable. It didn't hurt that the bank president was one of my dad's fishing buddies (gotta love small towns). A few years later, a partner and I built a wash (with my dad's blessing), and eventually ended up with four. I'm ready to sell out and retire now, hopefully to someone as eager as I once was.

 

[Car_Wash_Guy]

Funny question.

I worked in a full service after HS way back. We made good money back then - I'd usually take home $100/day. I started telling friends I wanted to own a wash some day. For the next 20+ years I kept doing the same - always mentioning to people I wanted a wash one day.

After the economic crisis I noticed a beautiful wash laying dormant. Being in commercial real estate, the corner site appealed to me. My wife convinced me to make a lowball offer to the bank and that's what I did. Called in the distributor that built it and he was confident we could get it running with minimal work. I think we had the place up and running the same day, after being closed I think 2 years. Basically offered a land cost price and got it. AS IS. Had ZERO experience. I actually like it - gives me something to do. Being a landlord is family hands off.

Always looking for other deals. Just that this market is a bit hot for my liking. I'll wait a bit.

 

[wyatt]

I'm currently an accounting student and really like the idea of passive income. Anyways, for the last 5 years I've been working in Alaska as a fishing guide in the Summer months. Then last year when I was looking at apartment complex listings I happen to look at a carwash listing and realized there might be some potential. It wasn't passive income like I was looking for but was intriguing none the less. I'm not sure how I was able to convince the bank to loan me half a million but trust me it wasn't easy. About 3/4 of the banks I tried said no.

Somehow I made it happen with zero experience but everything seemed to fall into place. The person that sold me the wash stayed on to help me learn the business which looking back was a huge help. We are still friends and I couldn't have done it without him staying on for awhile because I had zero experience in the carwash industry and he taught me everything.

Now, I have 3 car washes and can't wait to keep expanding, graduate college, and keep fishing.

 

[Waxman]

I started washing and waxing cars in the 80’s. In the 90’s, I started a full time detailing business in a rented location. I wanted a way to make money during the winter months when detailing was slow, so I developed plans for a car wash. It was not easy getting financed, but I kept refining the plan and eventually secured funding to build my wash. After the wash got going, I lost my lease when the landlord evicted me ( even though he had promised years earlier to sell me the building). Undaunted, I borrowed another $100k and built a detail shop on the carwash land. The business built up and I kept adding more to it; more vacs, more vending, mat brusher etc. Then I got my used car dealer license. Then a friend encouraged me to buy an apartment building. This year I plan to buy a second apartment building. Fun!

 

[kentadel]

Grew up on the same street as a self service car wash in a town of 400. Gave me the bug but didn't act on it until I was in my late 20's. First wash was built in 1990. A 2 and 1 concrete block building. Lot cost $40k and all in was $240k. I still own it and am currently remodeling and adding a 2nd in-bay automatic.

 

[2Biz]

I doubt if ANYONE has a similar experience....The CW 3 blocks from our house went on the market in 2010, they put a For Sale sign out front...My wife saw it and begged me for over a month to go check it out. I fought her tooth and nail telling her it wasn't as easy as stopping by once a week to pick up the Millions that she envisioned would flood our bank account! She PROMISED to help take care of it and be there every single day to help with it and to be faithful in helping with every single upgrade/modification...Needless to say I gave in and bought it without a single bit of experience. Oh wait, I did help a previous owner of the same wash clean bays and pits when I was 15. So I did have a bit of knowledge of what some of the Sh$t Jobs were in owning a wash! But she won out in the end. I think she quit going up and helping with the day to day the first time we stopped by and the Er was flooding! That was just a few months after taking ownership...It Might have had something to do with what spewed out of my mouth! She does still help take the $$$ to the bank. So I guess it wasn't a complete con job! What she envisioned came true, except for the $$Millions$$!

 

[I.B. Washincars]

What she envisioned came true, except for the $$Millions$$!

Don't give up just yet. I've done the math, and with a wash like yours the 2 million mark can be reached. All you will need to do is run it until you are 163 years old.

 

[2Biz]

I'll be lucky to make it to 63 years old! Let alone 163! LOL...Kudos to the people that can stay in this business as long as you have!

 

[Washmee]

My freshman year of college I needed a part time job. My little brother worked at a local conveyor wash owned by a large oil company, Standard oil(Sohio). Within a few months I was doing the daily reports and after 6 months I was offered the position managing another location. After 3 years as a manager I was offered a position as a district manager in charge of 9 locations. At the time Sohio had the largest chain of conveyor car washes in the country with over 100 locations. Today they would be called express exteriors. They were high volume low priced with free vacs and most had full service gas pumps. Once I got to see the financials I saw that there was money to be made in the carwash business but it was not working for the big oil company. One day I was assigned to train a new district manager for a nearby district. Soon I found out that he had already been in the business as a minority partner in a couple of washes with his older brother. It didn't take long for him to become disenchanted with working for big oil too. He found a run down full service in a small town to purchase and we both quit our jobs with Sohio. He ran the wash And I started a detail business in a building on the property. After about a year I sold him the detail business and worked for his brother for about a year running his washes. I found another run down full service for sale and with the help of a partner in the banking business put together a deal to buy it. That was in 1986. After a few years I bought my partner out and the rest is history. Now in my 33rd year of ownership.

 

[Ghetto Wash]

I have graduate degrees and had a good high paying executive job, but was getting bored. Saw an ad in the paper for a SS wash. I thought that owning a wash would be something I could do after work and make extra money. It was in a "red lined" area the banks were proactively looking to lend money into to show that they weren't discriminatory. A group of large banks in the area formed a "Community Development Corp." to facilitate the loans into this area. I got into this first wash with 100% financing, I didn't even have to supply the quarters to fill the changers. 75% from the bank and 25% from the CDC.

This wash was in a ROUGH part of town. The day I closed on it my young kids were playing in the living room with the evening news on with mom in the kitchen making dinner. She heard them say "Daddy's car wash is on the news". It sure was. A middle school kid had been killed there for his expensive sneakers and thrown in the ditch next door. That wasn't the only body that was found there during my years of ownership.

I ran this wash for years and paid it down, took the income from it and purchased another. Took the income from my two washes and purchased another. Eventually I was making more at the washes than I was at my job and enjoyed the washes more. Quit my job and started washing "full time" My kids were still young and I needed to provide health insurance so I got a job as a school bus driver to gain access to health insurance. I got paid every two weeks. My two week pay check after the cost of health insurance was deducted was less than $10. I got up in the morning and took a bus loads of kids to school. had a 6 hour lunch when I would run all the washes, then take bus loads of kids back home in the afternoon. Did that for 10 years.

Now I'm slowly winding down, selling one wash at a time until I'm done.

Car washing has been good to me, but I'm not as enthusiastic as I once was and the washes are starting to show it. It's time to move on.

 

[Alpine Dreams]

At 15, my second job was working at the largest car wash in town. I was fired after a few weeks. As I was leaving after being fired, one of the managers pulled me aside and said that I was the most detail-oriented detailer he had seen in his 20 years there. So I started working for myself detailing cars. I did this until I went into the Army as an infantryman at age 18.

Fast forward ~20 years, and I was climbing mountains in Colorado a year ago when I received a call from my cousin with a job offer to take over his car wash lease because he was taking over his father's washes. Here I am now saving to try to climb some real mountains. Hope to settle one day in Washington State near Rainier because I LOVE the weather in the Olympic Peninsula/Puget Sound area. And, because it's a great hub for some amazing climbing and guide groups.

 

[MEP001]

At 15, my second job was working at the largest car wash in town. I was fired after a few weeks.

Why were you fired?

 

[Alpine Dreams]

Why were you fired?

The same reason I don't have a job involving lots of interactions with people today - I'm not good at it. It manifests itself in several ways. Sometimes I'm rude. Sometimes I'm aggressive. It drains every ounce of my energy to speak with people so I avoid it. After I am rude or aggressive, I think about how I could have interacted better for hours and sometimes even days and feel horrible about it.

When I maintain my wash, I do my best to make sure everything runs. I pass a nickel through my coin mechanisms every time I come. I check to make sure my vacuums are sealed. I wash my vehicle in every bay at least once per week to make sure functions are working, not leaking and that chemicals are able to be smelled and seen. I like for my signs to be really clear to reduce questions. There is no phone number displayed for customers who have problems - only a box for notes to be left. I do all of this so that I do not have to interact with customers.

 

[Rfreeman]

In HS I always enjoyed washing my car at the self server nearby. One day I ran into the owners and talked their ear off, from then on I was convinced to try to get into the business. Tried to get into the business back in 2000 in an inflated real estate market and well we all know how that turned out. Ironically one of the washes I looked at that was listed for a fortune I ended up buying in 2014 for less than land value. Someone purchased it, paid waaaaaay too much for it and lost it to the bank. 1 ss bay out of the 5 worked, auto was torn apart, and all the doors on the vacs had been ripped off. I'm on a busy road so I thought about leveling the place to build a 5 unit small shopping center but decided to roll the dice and get the wash up and running (wash was built in 2003 so the bones were in excellent condition). It's worked out well for me and has been a nice source of additional, wouldn't consider it passive lol , income. Car washing isn't my full time job as I work in our family business, invest in real estate as a hobby, and car wash (2 locations). I will say I got lucky and help (from the real estate crisis) on my first wash....watched it listed for sale for 3 years!

 

[soapy]

WE had just sold our tire business in 1993 and I was acting as general manager for the tire company that bought us out in our state. I retained one tire store building and leased it out to them. I had some extra property behind the tire store. The last month I was with them I had a great month landing a large mine account and selling over $250,000 in tires and made the company over 25,000. They came in and cut my salary from $2500 to $1500 and gave my accounts to the laziest guy I had ever worked around. I built my wash behind the tire store on land I owned back in 1994 using car wash magazines annual surveys to make pro formas and get a SBA loan for $430,000. I built a 4 ss bay with one auto and left the tire business for good.

 

[Alpine Dreams]

The last month I was with them I had a great month landing a large mine account and selling over $250,000 in tires and made the company over 25,000. They came in and cut my salary from $2500 to $1500 and gave my accounts to the laziest guy I had ever worked around.

What a kick in the groin. Glad you were able to leave a place that literally seems to hate their workers.

 

[MANLO]

I'm friends with two brothers who have done pretty well at creating passive income mainly through building and leasing commercial real estate. I've always been impressed with what my friends have accomplished with commercial real estate and the passive income that it brings them. I've worked for the federal government for the past 30 years, but have always had a side job. Mostly cleaning houses for realtors and landscaping. In October of '13 I noticed the wash that I now own (with my two friends) for sale on the website of my bank. We negotiated a deal with the bank and closed on the wash in December of '13 and five years later we are doing okay. I'm 16 months from retiring from the government and we have been thinking about turning the wash into a commercial building and leasing space. Since I do the day-to-day work at the car wash I have a hard time calling the income "passive". I enjoy the wash for the most part, but would prefer to generate income without having to deal with trash and mud on a regular basis.