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WHAT FORMS OF<br />
PAYMENT DO YOU<br />
ACCEPT?<br />
We take $1 tokens, quarters,<br />
dollar coins, paper money, and<br />
credit cards in the wash bays.<br />
WHAT ARE YOUR<br />
PRICES?<br />
Two locations are $4 for<br />
4½ minutes. And the other<br />
two locations are $3 for 4<br />
minutes. Vacuums are $1 for 2½<br />
minutes.<br />
WHAT DO YOU VEND?<br />
We do extremely well with<br />
vending at all of our locations. The<br />
top sellers at two locations —<br />
of which have two glass front<br />
vendors side by side — besides<br />
tree fresheners, are the yellow<br />
microfiber towels purchased from<br />
Costco. The microfiber towels<br />
outsell the paper towels.<br />
We charge $1.75 for<br />
microfiber towels<br />
and $1 for paper ones.<br />
WHY RUN A SELF SERVE?<br />
I thought full service car washing was the only way to go if you were going to be in the car wash<br />
industry, until the early 90s as that’s when I learned about the self serve side of the business.<br />
It started when I was attending the Western Carwash Association convention, and I was in a full<br />
serve workshop meeting — and there was a lot of talk about the high cost of labor, the high cost of<br />
workers compensation, insurance and all the headaches of running a full serve car wash… Every<br />
now and then you would hear a burst of laughter and clapping coming from the meeting room next<br />
door. And, after a little bit, I decided I needed to go next door and see what all the excitement was<br />
about. It turns out it was a self serve session going on, and they were all happy, upbeat, laughing<br />
and clapping and their only worries were how to keep the money in the money box so the thieves<br />
didn’t get it and how to stay on top of keeping the equipment in good operating condition.<br />
Because I noticed how much the operators in the room were enjoying their careers in the self<br />
serve car wash business, at that moment I said I need to be a part of this industry as well. And from<br />
that day forward I promised myself to get into the self serve car wash business. And so, in 1995, I<br />
opened my first self serve — which I built from the ground up. It was in a small northern California<br />
town called McCloud, California, where I had a vacation home at the time. I figured I needed to<br />
try out the business in a town where it was cheaper to build, and land costs were less expensive<br />
(compared to the San Francisco Bay area).<br />
It turned out to be quite an exciting business. And, so, I continued to look for other sites. I opened<br />
up my second location in another small town in northern California called Corning, California.<br />
As I learned more about the self ser serve business, I felt comfortable that I knew enough about<br />
it to make it successful just about anywhere in California. I started looking for wash sites in the<br />
San Francisco Bay area and that’s when I started to sell my washes up in northern California to<br />
concentrate in areas closer to home.<br />
HOW DID YOU GET<br />
STARTED IN THE CAR<br />
WASHING INDUSTRY?<br />
Car washing is something I have<br />
a great passion for. I grew up<br />
in the car wash industry as my<br />
parents owned and ran a full<br />
serve car wash in southern San<br />
Francisco for 61 years. I started<br />
working at the car wash at a very,<br />
very young age. In fact, my wife<br />
Cathy (while she was in college)<br />
was a cashier at our full serve car<br />
wash back in the early 70s. Lo<br />
and behold we got married a few<br />
years later and continued the car<br />
wash tradition as we run the self<br />
serves together.<br />
12 • SUMMER 2019
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