3 Predictions for the Car Wash Industry
It’s hard to predict the future. Sometimes the future seems to be heading in one direction and then it takes a hard left turn. It used to be that everyone thought flying cars would be the future.
The car wash industry has a similar prediction problem. Some trends promise to take off but never materialize.
Here are 3 predictions from recent history. It’s up to you to decide if these trends are worth a test drive in 2024 and beyond.
Prediction 1: Self-Service Bays Will Go Extinct
In 2010 on carwashforum.com, a car wash owner was communicating concerns about the shifting tides of the car wash industry. Revenue per bay in self-service car washes was down. If profits were going down but fixed costs, taxes and utilities were going up, self-service car wash owners were going to get squeezed out of existence. If they raised prices, their already dwindling customer base would evaporate like suds in the sun. He predicted that self-service was on its way out.
It’s been well over a decade since “washboy,” the car wash owner with a stormtrooper on the toilet as his profile picture, made his prediction. Was he right? Has self-service gone down the tank?
Well, in 2020, there were 16,250 self-service car washes in the US, according to CarWash.org.
Was the prediction wrong or is the self-service car wash dying a long, slow death?
Prediction 2: Self-Driving Cars Can’t Go Through Automatic Car Washes
Self-driving cars have been a dream for a very long time. A car that drives itself would automate one of our least favorite activities.
The problem is that self-driving cars rely on very expensive sensors. While cameras are fairly cheap to manufacture, it’s Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors, not cameras, that will be the cutting-edge technology that could make self-driving cars safer than human drivers.
LIDAR equipment is attached to the outside of the car making it vulnerable to car wash equipment from automatic car washes. Additionally, soap residue or hard water could affect the accuracy of the equipment.
In 2018, a CNN article reported that the only way to wash a self-driving car was to do it by hand. Sensors needed a delicate human touch with microfiber cloth and window cleaner. It seems that, according to this prediction, self-driving cars would spell the end of the car wash industry as we know it.
Not only were self-driving cars an issue for car washes but many safety features such as collision detection had their own problems.
However, the car manufacturing industry has responded by equipping their vehicles with car wash mode. Meanwhile, self-driving car developers have played with the idea of self-cleaning sensors.
Are these solutions good enough? Will autonomous technology in cars begin to wreak havoc in 2024 and beyond?
Prediction 3: You’ll Need a Car Wash Pit Cleaning Company
If there’s one prediction that we can be sure about in 2024, it’s that car wash owners everywhere will need to clean their car wash pits at some point. Car wash pits need regular cleaning.
But, what isn’t clear about this prediction is whether you will clean your own car wash pits or if you’ll hire a company that can pump them out faster and leave them cleaner than you can.
Some car wash owners spend the most hated hours of their job shoveling sludge from a car wash pit. Perhaps that’s how they’ve always done it and how they’ll continue to do it.
However, trends have been strong over the past few years as more and more car wash owners are hiring Pit Crew to clean their car wash pits. If these trends continue, we’ll be making more car wash owners in 2024 than we ever have.
What do you think about this final prediction? Is it time you gave Pit Crew a call?
