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Separate Bay for dryers?

Etowah
B

Brucedvm59

Member
I have two ibas, PDQ m5s. We keep them very well maintained and they are doing a very good job for us. Our problem is volume. We have many days that we are doing over 200 washes a day. Often early afternoon when things are busy, there's five and sometimes more cars waiting in each lane. I've got four self-serve bays and they keep pretty busy but rarely are all for being used at the same time. I'm wondering if anybody has tried taking the dryers out of the ibas and putting them both together in a separate Bay that would act as the drying Bay. So when people pulled out of the wash they would make 180° turn and drive-thru through the drying Bay. I'm looking at different options to speed up the wash and this would definitely save time because people could pull right out of the wash and into the drying Bay. Any thoughts? Has anybody tried this? Does this seem insane?
 
yes this is insane. You're basing your argument on a handful of busy days and you are assuming that customers will somehow benefit from this new set up. They won't. They will not want to do something different than they have done at your wash in the past. Since no other car washes that I know of are set up this way, you'll be asking them to learn a new method and that is not wise. Customers want it as simple and easy as possible. If they don't wait and drive off they'll probably come back later. You can't be asking them to do too many extra things because they won't want to do it. Even if it's something as simple as leaving a bay and driving into another bay. It kind of defeats the purpose of the inbay automatic concept. Plus it will cost you a bunch of extra money. Bad idea. Find another way to improve the speed. Your'e washing 200 cars in the day. That's great. Just be happy with that and don't try To create a different system when it's not really needed or practical.
 
We have seen this approach. So no drying option at all on the auto wash. The dryer is in it's own bay and they even charge for the service.

So the wash pkgs do not include dryer, but if you want the dryer, you can go through the drying bay and pay a little extra for this service.

Definitely not the norm, but have seen it done and they seem to sell quite a few dryer services each month.
 
Before I tried something like that, I would replace one of the M5s with a newer machine that can speed up the wash process. A Washworld Razor Edge can do almost 200 cars in a day. Keep the 2nd M5 for overflow then replace it in a couple years.

Are you doing onboard drying? If so, eliminate that immediately. Traditional drive through dryers at the end of the bay would speed things up too.


David
 
Waxman said:
yes this is insane. You're basing your argument on a handful of busy days and you are assuming that customers will somehow benefit from this new set up. They won't. They will not want to do something different than they have done at your wash in the past. Since no other car washes that I know of are set up this way, you'll be asking them to learn a new method and that is not wise. Customers want it as simple and easy as possible. If they don't wait and drive off they'll probably come back later. You can't be asking them to do too many extra things because they won't want to do it. Even if it's something as simple as leaving a bay and driving into another bay. It kind of defeats the purpose of the inbay automatic concept. Plus it will cost you a bunch of extra money. Bad idea. Find another way to improve the speed. Your'e washing 200 cars in the day. That's great. Just be happy with that and don't try To create a different system when it's not really needed or practical.
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I.B. Washincars said:
Do you have the option to move the dryers outside the exit 10' or so? This would get the car out of the bay so another could load quicker.
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Yes I was actually just looking at this as another option. We could move them to outside and put an awning over them. We're in Michigan, so yes, that sounds like that'd be a better way to go
 
AnalyticWash said:
How are your wash packages set up? What is your average wash time for each? How are they priced?
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So currently the wash packages are 8, 10, 13 and 16 and the longest wash is now taking close to 7 minutes. Currently making some other changes. Adding another productivity Arch. I think I can get it down under 5 minutes. But just looking at different options to speed things up
 
Waxman said:
yes this is insane. You're basing your argument on a handful of busy days and you are assuming that customers will somehow benefit from this new set up. They won't. They will not want to do something different than they have done at your wash in the past. Since no other car washes that I know of are set up this way, you'll be asking them to learn a new method and that is not wise. Customers want it as simple and easy as possible. If they don't wait and drive off they'll probably come back later. You can't be asking them to do too many extra things because they won't want to do it. Even if it's something as simple as leaving a bay and driving into another bay. It kind of defeats the purpose of the inbay automatic concept. Plus it will cost you a bunch of extra money. Bad idea. Find another way to improve the speed. Your'e washing 200 cars in the day. That's great. Just be happy with that and don't try To create a different system when it's not really needed or practical.
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I appreciate your input, makes total sense. Thank you
 
DavidM said:
Before I tried something like that, I would replace one of the M5s with a newer machine that can speed up the wash process. A Washworld Razor Edge can do almost 200 cars in a day. Keep the 2nd M5 for overflow then replace it in a couple years.

Are you doing onboard drying? If so, eliminate that immediately. Traditional drive through dryers at the end of the bay would speed things up too.


David
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We don't have onboard dryers. They are at the end of the bay but most people are reluctant to pull in. If there's a car still drying that's why I was looking at that as an option. So if anything I think I'll move them to just outside the bay with an awning over it
 
washnshine said:
If you really need to push cars more quickly through your automatics, the most logical thing to do would be to convert 1 ss bay to another IBA. Turn your 4/2 into a 3/3.
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That's an idea and maybe something to look at. The self-serve bays though are significantly shorter than the ibas. Not to say I couldn't build it out to make it work.
 
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