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No employees, no overly expensive equipment, little overhead beyond water usage, utilities, soap and insurance.
Finding the best location to attract volume is the only hard part of the battle.
After that, you hook up the hoses, the soap dispensers, the vacuums and the coin/credit card takers.
Then sit back and relax as people come and actually pay you to wash their own car.
Easy peasy Japanesey?
And PS: Where else other than a car wash can you get people to spend $3.00 bucks for an air freshener that they can get in the automotive section at Walgreens for 99 cents for a pack? Ca-Ching!
I tried to buy a carwash about 5 years ago. Contacted the owner and he wouldn't show me any documents showing income/profit. That ended that, but I do know soneone who owns 2 and says it does good for him. According to him they have low profit margins, but they don't take a lot of time, effort, or cost. Just the up front costs can be high. Location is everything.
Depends on where they are, terms of the site lease (most are on leased sites), competition, environmental requirements.
For example, very bad investment in Nevada, California. Questionable in the northeast due to weather (short season) and environmental regs. In Texas, they are putting up low-cost tunnel car washes. Have minimal employees, but people don't want to get out of the car, while conventional car washes have declined in popularity.
So the answer is, it depends. But these are not 'ignore and let the money come in' operations. You have to service the equipment, check soap levels, have the recycle tanks regularly pumped, have security check on them at night in certain areas, etc.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Restrain
Depends on where they are, terms of the site lease (most are on leased sites), competition, environmental requirements.
For example, very bad investment in Nevada, California. Questionable in the northeast due to weather (short season) and environmental regs. In Texas, they are putting up low-cost tunnel car washes. Have minimal employees, but people don't want to get out of the car, while conventional car washes have declined in popularity.
So the answer is, it depends. But these are not 'ignore and let the money come in' operations. You have to service the equipment, check soap levels, have the recycle tanks regularly pumped, have security check on them at night in certain areas, etc.
Yes, also bad in the more affluent areas where people prefer the full service car washes and can easily afford $11 for it. In low income areas, they can be a magnet for vandalism and theft from the coin boxes. I wouldn't attempt it if the land or land and structure is leased, the owner is likely to eventually sell for development as land value goes up. If you can find one for sale, property included, it may make some money for a while, but make sure it already has water filtration and recycling, because more and more states are requiring this under environmental laws.
No employees, no overly expensive equipment, little overhead beyond water usage, utilities, soap and insurance. .......!
No employees? Nobody is going to clean, empty the trash, empty the vacuum cleaners, unplug the drains, fill the soap dispensers, service the coin boxes, and keep the machinery running? Nobody s going to make sure the homeless don't move in under the roof? Nobody cares if the locals use your parking lot as a park and ride?
No expensive equipment? Maybe you haven't priced it out yet?
No employees? Nobody is going to clean, empty the trash, empty the vacuum cleaners, unplug the drains, fill the soap dispensers, service the coin boxes, and keep the machinery running? Nobody s going to make sure the homeless don't move in under the roof? Nobody cares if the locals use your parking lot as a park and ride?
No expensive equipment? Maybe you haven't priced it out yet?
My guess is that OP has not thought about how many cars per hour could be washed without hiring anyone else to handle the other stuff.
self storage units would be better I think. We have car washes around here go out of business. I'm not sure profit wise how great it is, but not something I would choose. I'm sure you will need an employee or two to keep it maintained unless you can yourself. Costs maybe minimal, except utilities. I think finding the right location will be tough to. Here in my town of 27k pop we have 5 or 6 car washes. One of them is always busy, it's right in town, busy street. They off self serve and non self serve and it seems that non self serve is busier. I think more people rather pay the extra and not get out of the car. My husband and I always use self serve. If you locate an area with a need for it.. It might do good.
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