No body asked me but,

[soapy]

Winter reflections: This has been the strangest winter for my carwashes I have seen. It started out in late October with some early and continued through the end of January with cloudy skies almost every day. We had 2 sunny Saturdays out of 14 during that time, on Christmas day and New Years day, days when no one would wash anyway.
For the first time ever our city and county started to spray brine on the roads before it snowed. Everytime the weatherman said we might get snow they were out spraying entire road ways with a liquid brine solution. This was to prevent any ice forming on the road and making it safer for eveyone driving. To that extent I think it worked. FOr the carwash business however it had a lot of negative effects. It kept roadways wet and sloppy for days at a time. In the past when temps dropped to below 20 the roads would freeze and people would wash their cars. The brine mixture which included sugar beet sugar byproduct would stick to the roads and kept the roads slushy for several days after a storm. This mixture was not a problem to clean off of cars when people would finally wash it just extended the interval between washings by a month or more.
The next thing I have noticed in my detail shop is that most cars that are coming in now show several rust spots all over the paint. This is not the sheet metal rusting but rather small peices of rail dust, and other metals that have deposited on the paint and rust is accelerated by the brine mixture. There is going to be a big learning curve here for the people as they have never had this problem.

 

[soapy]

Part 2
Weather cooperated in Febuary and business was strong. Everyone in this business knows we are more weather dependent than economy dependent. I have been using a formula for the past few years that lets me track weather year to year based on an actual numerical value instead of just saying " The weather has been bad or the weather was great this year". Not that anyone but a carwash operator would care about such things. In future postings I will explain my weather numbers and how I arrived at them.

 

[soapy]

Car wash Crooks
When I first started in the carwash business I was a green horn for sure. I remember collecting quarters from the vacs a couple of time a week in the first couple of years of operation. I would always see the vacs being used dailey but when I went to collect the money there was just not much to collect each week. The vac money was falling far short of projections and no where near any industry averages. I diligently kept track of the change machines counting each bill and comparing it to the coin counter. Soon the bills and coin counter where not balancing. I never caught anyone cheating it but figured it would happen at night. I started using lamp timers to turn the changers off at night and that worked for a while but soon the problem returned. Finally I bought a regular VCR and hooked up a makeshift camara and set it to record 6 hours per night. It did not take long to get a picture of my crook. I made up pictures of him stringing the changers and turned them into the police. By accident one night the crook was pulled over for a traffic violation and his theft tools were discovered. The cops quickly put it together that he was also my crook. After interveiwing him for a while he spilled the beans about his racket. He had been living off of carwashes by stealing from them for over 25 years. He started in Florida and after a few years he was caught there but before he could be brought to trial he skipped out and assumed his brothers identity. He wandered the country stealing from carwashes in several ways without getting caught again. One of the keys to his success was that he never took all the money from anything. He had a way to get into the vacs coin boxes without leaving any signs of ever being there. Rather than take all the quarters he always put a few back in the drawer. He would setup in an area and work all the car washes on a rotating basis. He got away with doing this for decades. When the cops interveiwed him he had some information on a few drug crimes so they let him go for being cooperative and for his continued information. I caught him on tape again a few nights later and went back to the police with the tape. Their response to me was that he was giving them info on drug crimes and he needed a little something to live on so that is why he was visiting my washes, for his living expenses. Hard to believe but true. He finally went to prison when he took up with an under age girl and the police found a gun on him. He went to prison for a few years but I am sure he is out terrorizing other car washes somewhere now. Be on the lookout for ED Hockenberry. Since then I learned to have layers of locks on everything and never to rely on one lock for anything.

 

[soapy]

Murphy visited me today
Everyone knows Murphy's law I hope. Today I got a call that one of the vacs at a location was jambed with quarters. I was close so I went right over. Quarters were jambed in a old secure coin electronic mech so tight that the coin mech had to be removed from the face plate to clear all the quarters. I got them cleared and the coin mech worked fine not mounted on the face plate. Put it back on the face plate and the coin mech would not work. Took it off the face plate it worked fine. On and off a few more times same result. WHile this is going on 3 people drive up and say they want to use the vacuum I am working on. 7 other vacs around the property are open with no one around them each time they drive up to the broken vac. Tried using nylon bolts and nuts to mount the acceptor with no luck. I had a spare coin mech so decided to install it. By this time the sun had come out but temps were still only about 35 degrees. The wind had picked up to a nice 20 mph or so. WIth the sun out my photo gray glasses that darken in sunlight turned a couple of shades darker than a welding helmet. The wind chill had made my fingers feel like robotic hands trying to put the small nuts on the small bolt located in very tight quarters.While doing this I see 2 different ladies pull up to another vac island get out and start pulling trash out of their cars and filling the garbage can. Each one drove off after the garbage dump without ever using a vac or spending a dime. The new coin mech took care of the problem eventually after 3 hours of trial and error.