Replacing working IBA's for new equipment, when does it make sense?

[Wash4Life]

I am currently trying to figure out when the right time is to replace our 2 IBA's. Both are currently working but are approaching 14 years in use. Our top wash runs around 9 minutes per car which certainly puts a limit on our throughput on busy days.

We currently average about 2000 cars per month on our IBA's and we are spending approximately 20k/year to maintain them. I would say around 25-30 days per year we have capacity issues with long lines where I see customers turn away just because they do not want to wait.

Does anyone have feedback on replacing existing working equipment for new, faster, & cheaper to maintain equipment? Did you see an increase in revenue even with the same customer base?

Does anyone have insights into what your daily capacity for your IBA's needs to be in order to maximize value from your customer base?

I hate the idea of replacing perfectly good & working equipment so how do I decide?

Given the numbers you have provided, I say it's time to get new machines in there.

 

[Kramerwv]

I have three locations. Replaced the equipment in one last year and that site is up 10% YOY while the other two are down 10%. 20% was accurate for me. I noticed an increase in volume almost immediately when the new equipment went in. Too bad COVID hit. I should note, I replaced a SoftGloss and three Radius high impact units with a new SoftGloss and three Radius high pressure units.

How do you like the radius units? I haven’t heard much about them.

 

[BenW@JCCW]

How do you like the radius units? I haven’t heard much about them.

I've been able to increase washes per hour, reduce water consumption by 25% and the ColorWave seems to be a crowd pleaser. I do not have WashBuilder on the Radius units but do on the SoftGloss. I haven't had any issues with the the pump stands but should something need replacing it will be 200% easier than on the old style HI pump stands. The design is much improved. A few issues with gantries but nothing major, just annoying having them within the first year. We have three good factory techs in the area which was the primary reason I stayed with Ryko.

Need to end with a comment on WashBuilder. I do not play around much with things other than speeding things up for the busy winter months and increasing dwell time during bug season but WashBuilder is a nice improvement for the Ryko units.

 

[soonermajic]

BenW, what is so nice about WashBuilder? I wanna get 3 pkgs set, & forget it.
What do you even need Washbuilder for?

 

[BenW@JCCW]

BenW, what is so nice about WashBuilder? I wanna get 3 pkgs set, & forget it.
What do you even need Washbuilder for?

If you are familiar with Ryko you know there are limits in customizing the wash packages. For example, without WashBuilder the ColorWave come after the high pressure wash pass. You cannot chose to have a different surface treatment go before it. Also with WashBuilder you can set the pass speeds for each wash package differently. Without WashBuilder you select a single speed for each application. so while I largely agree with your approach it would still be nice to be able to maybe allow for a slower RO pass for the top package, as an example.

Hope that makes sense!