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Mike Walsh King Koin | Bismarck, North Dakota<br />
50<br />
years<br />
Q. What was the exact year you<br />
entered the car washing industry?<br />
My dad and his partner were their own general<br />
contractors back in the summer of 1968. It was the<br />
summer before my senior year in high school. My<br />
dad’s business partner starting about 1960 at the<br />
time and he really did not speak that great of English<br />
(being a POW from Germany 15 years earlier).<br />
One thing he was was an excellent bricklayer.<br />
It was during the initial month or so of construction<br />
that I was the mortar mixer mud person for<br />
the 2 brick layer crew. [I helped build the car wash<br />
with my dad’s partner (foreman of the project).<br />
Q. Why did you enter the industry?<br />
My folks were both getting closer to retirement<br />
... I seemed to have an independent streak in me<br />
when it came to settling into college-university life<br />
back in ‘69- ‘70. My dad’s partner also was leaning<br />
towards getting out of the laundry/car wash<br />
biz and was focusing more and more on building<br />
apartment houses, etc. I will be honest, I was pretty<br />
pathetic when it came to electrical-mechanical<br />
so there was definitely a transition.<br />
Q. What were things like for your self<br />
serve when you first started out (what<br />
were your prices, etc.)?<br />
Five minutes per quarter. Coin meter was the more<br />
primitive style with the plastic AirPax & plastic<br />
cams similar to the time accumulators on our original<br />
Coin Op Laundromat Dryers. It was a lot more<br />
physical back then with the required clean up, etc.<br />
Less than 600 PSI pumps and no deicer system, etc.<br />
The original bays were smartly designed with more<br />
slope than most bays which helped. I remember an<br />
all nighter with my dad getting the original Canadian<br />
made (Bronco???) pumps that had grease zerks<br />
on them, etc. to work for what we know was going<br />
to an extremely busy following day.<br />
Q. How have things changed since then?<br />
Mucho lotta changes. Cat 430s ... still much lower<br />
pressure than our 1500 psi Cat 310s that came<br />
in 1987. In 1979 I was my own general and hired<br />
a bricklayer to complete and totally enclose our<br />
third bay into a Truck-RV Bay which just had an<br />
8-foot wall prior to 1979. What allowed us to do<br />
that was I had to prove to the then city building<br />
inspector that the block wall was filled with con-<br />
crete which my dad’s partner did back in 1968.<br />
In 1980 came our homemade translucent dividers<br />
with canopy and deicer ... see kingkoin.com<br />
<strong>web</strong>site for pics. That made for 6 bays total albeit<br />
tandem style. A two-stall dog wash was added<br />
in 2009. A lady during one of the bible studies<br />
I participated in said that had there been a dog<br />
wash back in the day ... her first marriage probably<br />
would not have ever broken up as most of their<br />
arguments about who would wash the dog were<br />
apparently more serious than some may think!<br />
Q. What kinds of car wash/industry changes<br />
or developments over the past 50 years<br />
have impressed you the most?<br />
The Dixmor LED 7s that fellow carwashforum.com<br />
members and Self Serve Car Wash News steered me<br />
towards. I was blessed with PLC-Touchscreen programming<br />
help on our (very proud of height positioning)<br />
dog wash tubs. The tubs started out as<br />
a cardboard model that I showed my dakta (phd<br />
touting) somewhat girlfriend during that admittedly<br />
fragile development time. She was not interested<br />
in the least bit ... not sure if that is why she kind of<br />
sorta steered away from yours truly from then on!?<br />
Keep coming!<br />
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