The One About Car Washes
2024-08-01 00:57:37
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the Car Wash, I mean, podcast, I mean, Podwash. This is Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Wash. No.
Put your car in neutral, take your foot off the gas.
Foot off the brake.
What? Well, and gas, really.
Yeah, I guess. I guess. Yeah.
But yeah, brake. See, I'm fired. That's why you get promoted.
Right. You're, you know, I keep you on. You're a great guy. You keep morale up with the other employees.
So I've kept a lot of jobs that way.
I'll bet, man. I'll bet. I've lost a lot of jobs because of the opposite.
Because your foot was on the brake?
Because I purposely kept my foot on the brake.
Question.
What?
What's your deal? How do you, how do you get your cars clean?
Can you walk me through that?
Sure. Um, well, I guess really we get them cleaned. We have a guy who details sometimes. He's really reasonable and good.
Like at your house?
Yeah.
Oh God.
That's still never done that, but, uh, well, it can get really pricey. We just happened upon this guy who was good and very, uh, inexpensive. comparatively. I mean, some of those are like four or $500 a pop.
That's too much money to get your car washed.
Yes. Um, and, uh, so we stumbled upon this guy. So, even, even though we still use them kind of sparingly, most of the time we'll take them through an automated car wash, a friction type, no less. And that's what we do. And then we vacuum it ourselves afterward and get all sweaty, and we start giggling and laughing, and we go get a slushie.
Nice. God. Is that, is the slushie thing, a tradition for real?
No, no. I just made that up. It seemed like a nice ending.
You get me again, but that one was too normie and believable. No, I know.
I wasn't trying to get you. I was just trying to put a pleasant spin on sweaty vacuuming.
Yeah. I gotcha.
Okay.
Slushie, sounds like a nice ritual. Think about it.
I could go for a slushie right now. A blue raspberry. That's my favorite.
Uh, yeah. I like a little Coca-Cola and cherry mixed. We're talking the traditional icees.
Well, that's a frozen Coke, right? Yeah. Those are good too. I grew up on those. Yeah.
You remember the straws that had, like the cutout at the bottom, it, which made it kind of like a little spoon too? Yeah. Gosh.
Good stuff.
How about you? How do you get your car washed? or do you not? Because I read that 16% of people don't.
Don't wash their cars at all.
Ever. Like. apparently they'll own a car and never wash it for the entire time they own it.
You know, I see those occasionally and I'm wondering, do you even ever wash your car? And maybe not.
Do you even know what people say about you behind your back?
They write, wash me on your car.
Right. It's up in rules.
I go through the, uh, it's, it's the corporation is called Swifty, but I've always called it the Shwifty, I think because of that old internet cartoon, uh, from years and years ago. Um, so I call it the Shwifty. And so I go through the Shwifty about, about once a month or so. And there you vacuum beforehand. Uh, and even though you're not supposed to, I do like my armor awling and, and stuff like that.
My, my sort of lazy detail. Uh, and then I drive through the Shwifty, um, usually with Ruby, she loves the carwash. and now because of the, uh, great TV show, high maintenance, um, I, I got it from Ben Sinclair and high maintenance. I crank up the song Plantasia that, you know, that served as our opening song to our Biosphere 2 tour. Mm.
So he did that in, uh, of course he was getting like super high and slow motion listening to Plantasia. So Ruby and I aren't doing that part, but, uh, that's the tradition. She says, put on the song. We put on the song, we go through the Shwifty, and that's how I get my car clean. Except maybe once a year I will take it and drop it off for like a good, non-lazy Chuck detail.
I gotcha.
But I never had anyone come to the house, man. That's the, that's the dream.
One day Chuck, dare to dream.
I know. I just, Emily doesn't do any washing. She's always just like, can you please take my car to get detailed?
Yeah, I'm with you.
And I'll just make that happen.
And yes, that's one way. you can clean a car. You can have it detailed. You can go to one of those like open brick bays that have a high pressure washer hose.
I used to do that.
Yeah. Um, we're not talking about those. We're talking about a specific kind of car wash. Typically the automated car wash, where you, you do what you just described. You just go through a wild ride and your car gets cleaned as you move through a tunnel and come out the other side.
And there's a bunch of other types, but there's like a long, storied history. And what I took from this research, Chuck, is that that history is all American.
It really is. Uh, because since the car started being a thing, uh, I believe the first vehicle washer patent was given out in 1901 to, uh, Skerritt Hanley of, uh, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, American. And when the model T came out, you had your first, what was known as an automobile laundry. Uh, but these were all on the West coast. They were like Portland, Oregon, for some reason, San Francisco.
They count as America.
Absolutely. Um, but then that thing you sent me was wild, and I'm literally, it's like I'm 53 years old when I learned of that car bowl that people drove around and what were those called?
I think they called it an auto bowl, an auto bowl.
Can you describe that?
It's like a concave, um, it's almost like a giant birdbath that multiple cars can drive around in a circle. And apparently the bottom is purposefully ridged in concrete to make the whole ride very bumpy. And you're driving through water that comes up to the undercarriage of your car, old timey car, by the way, this is the twenties. And while you're doing this, it gets all the mud and muck off of your car from all the unpaved roads. Yeah.
It's like a little splash pad and you just do doughnuts and everyone else is doing doughnuts and splashing each other. And it just, it looked like a really kind of fun idea.
It did. But then think about that water, man, and the stuff that was getting off of the bottom of their cars.
Yeah. You want to be first in line each day. For sure.
Like for grand opening and then never come back.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, those were super cool though. Um, not what we were talking about with the automobile laundry. Um, like I said, they started on the West coast, but then, um, if you want to leave the West coast and go to the first automobile laundry, you'd have to go to Detroit, where Frank McCormick and JW Hinkle opened up a, uh, an automobile laundry in 1913, charging a dollar 50, which is close to 50 bucks for that 20 minute watch.
45 bucks. I saw that's, which is, I mean, this is essentially detailing, though is what they were doing. Like you would bring your car in, you would get out and stand around, and a bunch of professionals would clean your car inside and out. So, yeah, I mean, that's pretty good for a detail today. Even if they did a half a so-so job.
Yeah. And that was in 1913, but Hey, that's 50.. It's sort of clean as well. You know what I'm saying?
Is that the one that's at the corner of a Ponce? and, um, no, that's cactus. Yeah. That's a good one. I used to go there.
Yeah. Now that's a detailing place.
Okay.
Uh, and that's where I would go when we were recording at Ponce city market. I think that's one reason I don't detail as much anymore, because I could just drop it off there and then walk over to work.
Yeah.
Uh, and we don't do that anymore, because that building has been demolished.
Has it really? Ponce city market? Oh, okay. I was going to say, wow, I didn't realize we were propping it up that much.
No, it emotionally is demolished for me. Um, but over the teen years, there were various patents awarded, um, a lot of different, like apparatus, like, you know, maybe a better sprayer or a better, uh, hose piping systems. Like. there were a bunch of different patents handed out. And then finally, in the 1920s, uh, we got our conveyor belt car washes, but still not automated because they had like 40 people.
Like you would wash the bumper, then the next person would wash the back right fender and that kind of thing.
Yeah. But this was, so. this is the first gleaming of the automated car wash that we know and love today. Cunningham's automobile laundry, uh, which debuted in Chicago in 1922.. And, like you said, there was a bunch of people, um, and they did it assembly line style, because everybody was crazy about the assembly line at the time.
They would hook your car up to a chain and tow it along. And, as it was passing, people would do whatever they were supposed to do. Like this guy, um, was in charge of, of cleaning up the headlights. This guy picked, you know, the gnats, the dead gnats, off of the canopy of the car. Um, everyone had a job and it was actually an improvement from some of the earlier ones, where they use the assembly line because there would be people who had to push it from station to station.
So I'm quite sure that the workers were like, we love this tow line thing.
Yeah, absolutely. They don't have to push a car around and those cars are heavy.
Who wants to do that?
They're not like these light things these days.
Right.
Uh, pre-World War II, um, that was mostly those, those laundries. After the war, um, there was a guy, well, there were a couple of people. really, 1946 was a big year. Yeah. Um, there's one guy named Thomas Simpson who is credited as creating the first semi-automatic system.
Uh, it also had a conveyor belt. You hooked your car to a bumper, uh, and it did its thing. Um, but you still like got out of the car and there were still people involved. Um, that same year in 1946, a guy named Leo Russo, and I've seen different stories about this guy. I saw that he had this idea before the war, but then World War II comes along and they take his steel foundry business, the government, and basically says, Hey, you got to start making, uh, military parts for us.
So he kind of refined his Minuteman, M-I-N-I-T system during the war, uh, and then pivoted and started kind of making this system, like he built the actual equipment as a system and said, Hey, you can buy this Minuteman system.
And that's pretty much the standard today. If you want to open a carwash, there's plenty of companies that manufacture entire carwash systems. You just need to build the building and then buy their parts and install them.
Yeah. And someone will build your building too.
Right. You don't have to do it yourself.
If you have a lot of money, you can just get this done. Yeah.
I hope you know how to lay bricks.
Uh, the Minuteman would cost about 270 grand. today. He sold it to people for 16,000..
Right. And so this was a huge breakthrough. as far as, like automatic carwashes went. Like, there were still people involved, true, but, and they use the existing technology where you towed a car through a very long tunnel, but there was also like, uh, like all manner of new apparatus and, um, machines and cool stuff that your car would encounter along the way. Like now, there were spinning brushes, um, there were, there were jets of soapy water.
Um, they use vacuums that could suck the toupee right off of somebody 20 paces away. Um, there was the overhead dryers that kind of hung down, like the duct work hung down, and it looked like you were kind of passing under a giant silver octopus. Like it was an amazing, like this guy basically said, Hmm, let me think of the future and build it. And then eventually people will build better versions of what I created. That's essentially what the Minuteman system was.
Yeah. In 1946, which is impressive. Uh, his first client was a guy named Paul, uh, Moranian in Detroit. Once again at Paul's automatic auto wash, uh, again in 1946, he sold that very first one. And it was, it's recognized.
Paul's is the first automated carwash, so much so that it had a life magazine article written about it. A two minute car washer, colon, spectacular new machine scrubs, 750 autos a day.
I just bought the thing, said Paul. I had nothing to do with it.
Yeah. Yeah. Someone even built the building.
Right. So one of the other things, uh, like we said that there were people still involved, but there was vastly fewer people. I saw 40 or 50. you could, you could run into in an auto laundry working to clean your car. typically.
But with the, with the Minuteman system, it was down to as few as eight people. That's a huge reduction in workforce and therefore costs too. And that, if there's any theme or thread to the history of automated car washes in the United States, it's getting as, as many humans as humanly possible out of jobs in the car wash industry. That's essentially what they've been trying to do since day one.
Yeah. I was sort of laughing today, ironically, at the thought of like somebody in the tunnel where we can, where you can watch your car go by and get cleaned by, by robots, like on social media, complaining about, like AI technology, getting rid of humans and stuff. And they're like, Oh, it took six minutes for my car to get washed by those machines.
Right.
But yeah, you're right. That's, I mean, that was one of the first big examples of, uh, automation in America of like, let's get people out of here. Let's design these robotic arms to spray things and scrub things. Uh, and it was a huge hit, like huge. Um, there were 50 car washes in America in 1946 when Paul's opened, um, nine years later, there were 2000 of them and 50 of them were opening per month.
Yeah. Because America was like, we love cars and we have a bunch of money and pent up demand from the war. So let's go nuts. And the carwash industry, Paul's, uh, or not Paul's, but Russo's Minuteman system was invented at the perfect moment, essentially.
Yeah, absolutely. And then, before we break, I think we, we have to recognize, um, the Anderson family, the Anderson boys, uh, Archie, Dean and Eldon Anderson in Seattle in 1951, opened up their elephant carwash. And that was what's sort of looked back on, basically as the first fully automated, automated, automated.
I want to do one on the automat, by the way. Okay. Let me tell you about that.
Is that the lunch thing?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, but it was a no touch system, meaning things touched your car, but basically people did not.
Right. Things, meaning like tools, like brushes and stuff.
Yeah. Just because we're going to, we're going to differentiate between the touchless, true touchless systems and the no fingy system.
Right. So yeah. So finally, in the early fifties, we have, like the first true, truly automatic car washes elephant car, which is still around today. It's one of the more iconic signs in the United States.
Totally.
So, okay, let's take a break, and, um, you know, we'll come back.
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So I said that, you know, we've been well, not we, but the car wash industry has been trying to get fewer and fewer people involved, like over time. They've gotten really good at it, because it's entirely possible now that you will go to a car wash, a truly fully automated car wash, and there will be one person you run into. And that is the human being who is standing at the entrance of the tunnel. you're pulling into, waving you one direction or the other to get your front left, tire onto the conveyor that's going to pull your car through that tunnel. That's that's essentially could be the only person that you'll run into at a car wash now.
You know, I will say at my shifty, and I don't know if it's a company thing or each. Are you just laughing at shifty?
Yeah, I don't know why it keeps getting me, but it does.
It sure does. There are quite a few people that work there still. Besides the person guiding you in, there's there's probably six or seven people that, you know, they'll walk around and kind of make sure the vacuums are working right or they'll help you out if you can't figure something out. Like it's still, it's still customer friendly. There's not just one, you know, someone picking their nose saying like, you know, put, put your foot off the brake and put it in neutral.
There's one we go to, and that is the only person there. I mean, I'm sure there's other people inside in the AC, but it that's the one person working outside, at least one of the places we go.
Well, I'm sure that's when you go to open up a franchise. I'm sure the Mr. Moneybags or Mrs. Moneybags is like, how many people like what's the fewest amount of people I can get on the payroll? And shifty hats off to them because they keep the payroll going at least a little bit.
Yeah. And there's another model to. the one I'm talking about is the fully automatic express exterior model, which was a revolution in car washes. It was developed by Benny's Car Wash in Baton Rouge down in Louisiana in the very early 2000s, 2001,, as Kubrick would put it. And they it just kind of took off from there, because, again, you need one person, like a bunch of manufacturers started making the machines that you need to do this.
Touchscreen technology started to develop a lot more reliably. Like you could basically walk away from your car wash. I mean, not really, but it took a lot less of your time and effort to run a car wash than it used to. And they'd already tried this once before in the 60s and 70s. They tried it with coin operated washes, but they tried to just put those in and walk away.
And that's just not how it works. So those things got abandoned. That's not happening with these right now. They're actually proliferating at untold speed.
Well, I will also say this, but I'm really selling 50 right here, but they have someone, and this part annoyed me. And now I understand it. They even have someone at the touch screen when you're in your car, like push touching, offering to touch the buttons for you. And I'm always like, no, man, I got it. It's fine.
But now I realize that they're. they also mentioned the, the subscription, and they're trying to sell subscriptions. is what's going on.
Yeah.
Because that's where the big money is.
Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about that in a second. But at the one we go to, they let you use your hand, but they hold your hand. They guide your wrist while you make your selections.
It's a little hard.
They say make a pointy finger, make a pointy finger.
Kind of off-putting.
All right. So should we take someone through the actual car wash?
Yeah, let's. But get inside, take your foot off the brake, put your car in neutral. Yeah. And let's not play around, because this is serious business.
That's right. You put your car in between those rails. Once they give you the thumbs up, your car is going to be guided in there by something called a correlator. And those are the perpendicular rollers to the tires that are going to slide that puppy right in there. And then you, like you said, hopefully your foot is already off the brake and in neutral.
But if not, it should definitely be by this point. Right. And then you have these other little wheels that pop up and move your car along down that conveyor.
Yeah, it can also be like a tread that's tall enough to keep your car from rocking forward or backward. That's the newer version. So once the car enters the tunnel, this is where I was like, okay, and this is fairly old technology. But from what I could tell, it's still generally how they do it. There's a beam, an infrared beam that's constant until your car breaks it.
And the beam is connected to the computer. that's running the whole show. And it tells the computer just how long the car is. And then, depending on how long the car is, the computer will adjust the wash that it gets. It'll adjust how far back the rollers go and for what duration they spin, for.
Like, there's a lot of information they get just from the length of the car. And then that kind of adjusts the wash that you're going to get.
Never even occurred to me that. I just figured everyone got the same wash.
Yeah, me too. I thought so too.
Until yesterday.
They have another one that's similar at the exit where you're supposed to break it. And then, if it doesn't go back in the time that the computer calculates it should, it assumes that you've stopped at the exit and it shuts down the conveyor and the whole thing. And all these teenagers come over and start yelling at you to go.
Put it in drive now.
What's wrong with you, man?
While you're going through there, you're going to get that pre-wash sprayed on there. It's going to start to loosen everything up a little bit. Then you go through. These things have names. It's called a mitter curtain.
That sort of Sigmund the Sea Monster fabric strip that goes left to right that you drive under is called a mitter curtain.
Right. And they, I think of a more like Grimace than anything. They remind me of Grimace from McDonald's.
Okay.
The whole point of it is it basically lays on top of your car and moves around to kind of rub in that solution and also kind of rub off whatever grime it can. It's almost like, so. if the solution is like the shampoo that your stylus puts in your hair, the mitter curtain is their fingers working it through.
Is there anything better than that when you get your haircut?
No, not really. That with like a hot towel and all that stuff, it's pretty good.
Like now. I know why all the kings and queens and royalty had people wash their hair. It's the best.
Sure. Our detail guy does that too. Right there in our driveway.
Josh, you first or you me? Okay. Yeah.
Have a seat. Yeah.
Take your foot off the brake. Close your eyes. Um, then you get the foam, usually some sort of deep cleaner, uh, and you're going to get all manner of, of, and you know, they're all a little bit different, but you're going to, your car's going to be getting sprayed down really hard. You're going to have scrubbies that are going to be slapping the side of your car. Uh, plantages playing.
you and your daughter are laughing. Um, your car gets medium. Uh, I'd say low, low, high to medium, high, clean.
Okay.
When you get through it, it doesn't, you know, this is the lazy way to do it. And it costs like five or six bucks. Um, so that's why I do it. I'm not fooling myself into thinking that this is a great wash and it doesn't maybe scratch up my car a little bit here and there.
Yeah. It's not supposed to. And we'll, we'll talk about why in a second, but it's, it's not supposed to. It totally does. Um, the, the, if you get wax, you'll get wax after that rinse and the second mirror curtain, and then you'll get dried off.
They have one now called the laser wash 360, which is amazing. And in a 10 second pass, it can remove 80% of the water on your car.
Right. But see, that one is totally touchless, right?
The laser wash.
Yeah.
Yes. But it still has a dryer function.
Yeah. Yeah.
It was just too good of a stat not to share. I had to find a place to put it in.
No, I love it. Uh, I also love that rain shower at the end. Um, this article that Dave prepared for us talks about the high pressure. Jets to remove everything. Mine does a, a very heavy rain shower type of thing, which I really enjoy.
Yeah. I love that.
And then that dryer, that, what do they say? They get about 80% off. or is that just the laser watch?
Well, the laser wash three sixties website boasted that. So I'm guessing that's higher than the industry standard.
Yeah. That feels about right. Cause when you come out, it, it blows some of the water off. But again, I'm not, I don't have the kind of car that I'm precious about water spots and all that stuff. I don't get the wax.
I don't, you know, I just want to get it pretty clean.
Yeah. And there's plenty of, um, car washes like at a, at a express exterior model. Like you're done, go get out of here. Maybe you can go use the vacuums if you haven't used them beforehand. Right.
There are some that, um, there'll be like a team of people whose job it is to wipe down the water spots that the dryers didn't get off. Yeah. And I was reading on a detailers website. Like that apparently is really bad for your car, depending on where you live. Those water spots will dry up and the minerals inside stick around and just basically eat through your paint job and can go into the body of your car to where you're talking about body work.
Again, this was a detailers website, but, um, I did see that that's still considered a problem. Even with the touchless car wash that there's, as long as there's water spots that can, that can stick around the car washes, conceivably harmful to your car.
It's like the, the blood of the, uh, what was the creature in alien? Well, it has a name. I can't think of it.
Xenomorph. Yeah.
Dripping through all the different levels.
Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that. What a great movie. Was that, an aliens?
Alien. The very first alien has that sort of iconic moment where it's dripping down through all the levels.
The one with Danny McBride.
Yeah.
So there's one thing I am going to take issue with, and I'm basically going to ask you what you think. The CPH rate, which is cars per hour, is. how is a setting like, uh, it's how fast that conveyor moves your car through the car wash. And apparently, at a car wash, like, you make money by how many cars you can wash in an hour, uh, and you want to get that rate just right. Because if you send people in through fast to squeeze more cars, then it's not going to get washed as much.
And people may want to go through again or complain. So you want to strike that perfect balance. But I just, don't you figure that people are going to come and get their car wash no matter what, or are there literally people that pull in and they're like, oh, this line's too long and they just leave.
I think the greater risk is somebody who gets their car washed and notices that there's like still grime on, like the, the, um, quarter panels of their car. And they're like, well, I'm not going back to this place. I'm going to go to the one that's two doors down. That's just as convenient for me and see how their washes are. Like, I think there's plenty of people who would do that.
Who'd be like, that's not okay. And rather than go complain and try to get their five bucks back, they just go to a competitor. That's how, how competitive the industry is right now that you have to get it right. Essentially, even though plenty of them don't get it right. Ideally, you would get this right.
And that calculation of how many cars to send through there per hour is extremely, um, well, maybe extremely is not the word. It's a lot more detailed than you would think. Because it's not just like, okay, uh, if I put X number of cars through per hour, I can make X number of dollars, and we'll just set it to that. You have to take into account the quality of your water, like the hardness of your water, the softness of your water, how much of your water you're recycling, the quality of the detergent you're using would make a big difference. Like all these things that, in and of themselves, give you a good result or a poor result, are all going to factor or they're all changed.
They're variables of this larger cars per hour calculation that you have to make. And these, these, the machinery gets kind of slow or gunked up or whatever on a daily basis. So you essentially have to stay on top of this every day at a good car wash. from what I was reading.
Yeah. Okay. I guess I'm not explaining myself, because here's what I don't get. What is the benefit of being like, Oh, I'm going to set it just a little bit faster. Like, I don't think setting it a little bit faster would, I mean, it might get cars through there quicker, but I don't know if that would get more cars through in a day.
Unless at the end of the day, they're like, we're closed. All you 10 people go home. You know what I'm saying?
I don't know. Does that make sense? Well, let me ask you this. Is the answer like volume? Like if you have cars backed up and yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think that's exactly what you're saying. You're saying, if the line's too long, somebody will turn around and go to a different car wash.
Totally. Totally. Like some of those car washes, they'll have lines like out into the parking lot outside or out into the road outside. sometimes. And definitely, people will go and either come back later or go to another one.
And at times like that, your cars per hour really matters, but you don't want to juice it up too much, because again, all those people that you just got money from might not come back because you didn't do a very good job of cleaning their car.
Okay. That makes a little bit of sense to me, I guess. And people are probably like, Chuck, why don't you just get it? Maybe I'm from my own personal experience, because it's 50, you vacuum first. So you're already in there and vacuuming and cleaning your car.
Like if the line's long, you're just in that line. You're not like, you can't just leave.
Oh, really? That's terrible. That sounds illegal.
Like once you go in there and get that free vacuum, you've committed to the service of getting your car washed.
Huh? The one we go to has, one of the ones we go to, has a free vacuum first, and it used to be afterward, but then they redid the curbing and all that stuff. So now it's first.
Oh yeah, but then you can leave?
Yeah, totally. You just drive right through.
I bet people do that.
I'm sure some people do for sure. But I think also, wouldn't you just be like, well, I might as well get a car wash while I'm here too.
I mean, I am here and it's right there.
Exactly.
All right, moving on.
Okay. So, before we take a break, let's talk about touchless technology, because we were talking about a specific kind of car wash that gives you that exterior express thing that we just walked everybody through. That is a in-tunnel friction. automatic car wash. Checks all those boxes.
This is very important, everybody. You can't go through the rest of your life not knowing this terminology. There's another kind that says that friction thing, I don't know about that. We should go with something that doesn't use brushes, that nothing actually contacts your car except water, chemicals, air, and well, that's it.
Yeah, I guess that's it. I can safely say I've never been through one of these and I guess I'm a big dummy because I've never really seen these.
I haven't either.
But I watched a video of it and it is one of the big differences. It's a single bay. So you pull your car in and just it's sitting there. It's not on a conveyor belt. It doesn't have a car behind you and in front of you while they're in line, of course.
But yeah, I watched this thing and it's nothing such your car. Just spraying the heck out of it and blowing things and water and chemicals and the whole deal that you described. And I'm sure they have them in Atlanta. I just don't know where they are. But in the late 80s, it was a guy named Red Lewis, William Red Lewis, and he owned a car wash, I think more than one.
And he was tired of paying people for damaged mirrors or, if they break the antenna or anything that can happen, scratching up your car really bad. So he thought about the system. It's the laser wash 4000 is the most prominent technology. Now there's the laser wash 360 that you talked a little bit about, but it was it sold a lot. I think he sold about 8000 of these.
And if you have like a super fancy, nice car and you don't want to pay for the detailing every time, then I think a lot of people like that. use these.
Yeah. And even in Audi's user manual, it says it is best to use a car wash without revolving bristles if possible. Essentially, like use a either a hand wash or a touchless car wash, which again, that's different than no touch. Touchless, again, just means there's just water chemicals. There's nothing physically touching your car, right?
So, yes, it is endorsed. The nicer the car you have, the likelier it is. you're going to use a laser wash or some sort of touchless. But yeah, I've never seen one before either, and I don't know where to find one, but I'm sure they're all over the place, too. I guess because they're so much smaller than the tunnels, the tunnel version, you just drive right past them and don't even notice.
Well, they're not doing their job if they don't have one of those spaghetti arm blow up thingies, right?
And we should say also. Yeah, totally. We should say also, though, that the reason those brushes are so like hated among car wash aficionados is not because the brushes themselves are the problem. They make them with like microfiber today. Like they're really soft.
Like you would at a slow enough RPM. You probably enjoy like just being having those spin around your naked body, right?
But like rocks, grime, dirt, all that stuff can get stuck to the ends of these things, just a little bit. Tiny, tiny, tiny little bit. And when that thing starts spinning at 100 or 200 rotations per minute, it's going to like tear up the finish on your car. It certainly can. And so they have to clean brushes constantly, all the time, every day.
or a good car wash will, or else you're going to have customers complaining that you just scratched the finish on their car. And so people who are into touchless are like, let's just avoid the whole thing and don't use bristles at all.
Yeah. And I do understand mine is not the only perspective. And just because I don't get all bent out of shape about a scratch or two on my car. I know that people there are, people that are really, really, really, really into their cars and don't want any anything like that to ever happen to their little baby.
Yes.
For sure. Can we take a break?
I think so.
All right. We'll be right back and we'll finish up with more Car Wash Fitness.
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All right. So most of the car washes we've been talking about are the fully automated kind. You get in, you go, sometimes you stand. I mean, I stay in my car, because that's what kind of car wash. Sometimes you will get out, though still, and your car will just be ghost driven.
And I mentioned those little windows. They started putting windows in. We're like, hey, some people like to follow. Kids certainly love to walk along, see their car get washed. People that love their cars like their own children, might want to follow along and watch their car get washed there.
They brought a certain entertainment value, a certain entertainment value, to it by opening up those windows and keeping people occupied with the ones you have to sit in. They started putting in flashy lights and things like that, like that has nothing to do with getting your car clean or operating that computer system. It's like, hey, you're in your car. You may have claustrophobia. You may want to freak out.
So here's some fun things to distract you.
Right. And apparently that doesn't really work for people with severe claustrophobia who still, for some reason, take their cars through the car wash. And I was reading an industry website blog post on customers with claustrophobia. It was very heartwarming. They were like, no matter what, be patient with these people.
They're experiencing essentially a mental breakdown right now if they're panicking. But it can be a problem at car washes when people panic in their car because they become close to claustrophobic in the tunnel and try to get out. And people have died getting pinned, not necessarily from claustrophobia, but for misadventure, essentially getting pinned between their car and the machinery. And it's dangerous to do that. You do not want to get out.
It's not just a matter of getting wet. You can die in a car wash if you get out at the wrong place. So they were basically saying, if a customer ever comes up to you and they're acting anxious or nervous and they ask you or one of your employees to drive their car through the car wash, for them, just say yes. Say sure, of course, and do it for them, because they probably have claustrophobia and they might freak out in the tunnel. And they also started opening tunnels up.
A lot of the machinery has stuff that's kind of on the sides or up higher, a little more out of sight, but it's really open. They'll put in windows to let in outside light into the tunnel. They've tried a bunch of stuff, but apparently it still happens.
I definitely remember when I was a kid, car washes were much more claustrophobic feeling. I remember they were darker and I remember those, they were the big roller brushes that would basically like all come at you at once. And it's just not like that now. So I definitely can remember the difference. I did mention car wash subscriptions being where all the dough is, and I've never bought one because I'm one of those people, it's like, sounds, you know, they're trying to sucker me into something.
If you get your car washed more, like if you go through those things like once a week, then you're, you're making money, not making money, but you know what I mean? Like, I think you have to go through like three times in a month to break even, or maybe even get ahead a little bit on most of these services. So it's a pretty good deal. Actually, I don't know if I'm still going to do it, because I don't know if I would commit to going once a week, probably not. But that's just like Dave said in the article, like you can basically print money if you have a healthy subscription service at your, at your franchise.
Yeah, because like, let's say, somebody does come through, let's say, you sell subscriptions for 25 bucks and you sell regular car washes for 10 bucks to try to encourage people to go with the subscription, right? Yep. Somebody washes their car three times, they've actually come out ahead. But there's plenty of people like you who get it and just do it that one time and don't find time to come back in that month. And you're subsidizing or offsetting all the people who make, make sure they come back like five times that month.
And even still, what the car washes used to cost, which was like five bucks or something before the subscription model, you're still making way more than you were selling individual car washes from the subscription. And it's apparently very easy to talk somebody into it. You just have to say, come on, like a bunch. Right. And they cave every time.
And this subscription model is so lucrative that it has created a boom in the car wash industry in the United States and abroad, I take it.
Yeah, because equity firms are like, oh wait, you can put in this much money and make that much that quickly. Right. There are more than 60,000 car washes in America. is, according to Bloomberg News. That is going to be double.
Like. they're talking up to 120,000 car washes in the next eight years. Wait, what year is it? Six years.
Yeah.
By 2030.. And Dave found out this little stat, more car washes have been built in the last decade than since 1946, when they started doing this to begin with. Yeah. Combined.
Isn't that nuts?
That is nuts. But they're basically like, you can make like a million and a half bucks in revenue if you have a pretty average subscription based car service. And I think the most recent stat Dave had was 2021.. Only 21% of people, probably even less now, are washing their own car, compared to 50% in the mid 90s. So people are using these things and they're making a ton of money.
Yeah, they are. So these things are proliferating so much that some towns are actually putting moratoriums on their construction. They're like, we got enough. We got five. We don't need any more.
There's only 5,000 people in the whole town. And these companies are pushing back. In some cases, they're suing the towns or whatever, which seems shoddy. Like the town should be able to say, no, we don't want you in there. But the thing that the towns are worried about is, number one, these things employ almost no one, right?
So maybe they bring two, three jobs to town that weren't there before. They pay very little in taxes. I'm not sure how, but they figured out the tax base stuff. They're just not paying a lot in taxes. And they're not giving back to the local economy.
They're sucking money out of the local economy into the corporations and equity funds that own these car washes. And they're enriching their investors. They're not having any positive impact on the economy there. And then, on top of that, it's getting so close to oversaturation, or has reached that in some places, that very soon these things are going to start being abandoned. And it's going to end up just like malls, where you overbuilt, and now, all of a sudden, you have these big, hulking buildings that you can't figure out what to do with.
The same thing's going to happen with a car wash. What do you do with an abandoned car wash building, aside from demolishing it and starting over?
Yeah. I mean, you're not going to be shooting Chuck Norris movies and zombie movies in a car wash, like you can in an abandoned mall.
Right. Exactly. Oh, yeah. That was good stuff. Invasion USA, right?
Invasion USA.
And was that Day of the Dead in the mall?
Oh, I don't know. I just sort of threw that in there. I'm sure, I mean, Night of the Comet had a mall sequence. There have been plenty of, yeah. So as far as people washing their car at home, down to probably less than 20%, now, that's what I grew up doing.
The old routine in the 1970s and 80s, when the environment was a complete afterthought, when you would just turn on the hose. You didn't even have the sprayer. You would just throw the hose down on the ground, and it would just run water all over the driveway. And you would get out your bucket and just wash your car and rinse it. I did that, like every other dumb kid in the 1980s.
But boy, that's a waste of water. Even if you're using, and I don't have the exact percentage of sprayer versus non. Obviously, the sprayer is going to make sure water is not moving unless you're pulling that trigger. But you're using more water by a large margin. I believe 60%, more than a car wash does to wash your car.
And then all of that water, all of that grime and the engine residue and oils and exhaust. and just, you're washing car stuff off of your car. That's going down into the storm sewer. that isn't treated. That's just put right in the waterways.
Your car wash didn't do that. They have to take care of their water. They can't put it down. A lot of them reuse it at least a few times. They clean it and use that gray water.
I think in California, they have to recycle 60% of their wash and rinse water. But all of them have to put it, they can't put it down a storm drain. They have to put it in the sewer drain where it's treated. Yeah.
And so those requirements, like California's laws, have kind of driven the industry to invent, like more and more efficient systems that use less and less water and are able to reclaim more and more water for reuse. Right. So they've got it down to like a really good car wash can use something like, I think, 8 to 70 gallons per car.
That's a lot of water still.
Yeah. But still though, I looked at a 2011 HowStuffWorks article and they said 300 to 400 gallons per car.
Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, it's a huge improvement. But also, and then Dave makes a good point here, like also just be wary of any kind of weird advertising that you see in terms of being eco-friendly, because these days you can pretty much say what you want. So if you see a car wash advertising, ask them about it.
maybe, but I'm not saying it's all fraudulent. But you will see a lot of car washes that throw words like eco-friendly or there's just a lot of greenwashing, no pun intended, that's going on with what they're using to wash your car and how little water they're using.
And I should say, I get your point. Like if we're about to start fighting resource conflicts over water, we should probably stop using it to wash our cars at car washes eventually.
We'll just have dirty car. I mean, look what, I guess in Mad Max it was gasoline, but any water shortage movie, all the cars are dirty.
That's right.
So- Or any Alexander Payne movie.
So one of the, is that, like one of his things?
Yeah, he doesn't, he's like, every car is clean and every street is wet. And he's like, not. in my movies. I got dry streets and dirty cars. Nice.
So you mentioned sales gimmicks. That's the same with add-ons too. Consumer Reports said the wax, the sealants, the wheel cleaning, undercarriage cleaning, unless you have like salt crusted on your undercarriage, it's not worth it. It's not worth the money.
I always just had, I think both of us are a little bit like, oh, yeah, no thanks.
Right.
So I've never gotten that stuff. And it always seemed like a bit of a sucker seal, but you know, any kind of upsell, I'm always a little side-eyed at.
What's your angle, pal?
Yeah. More money for you. Cleaner car for me. I don't think so.
Yeah. This is it for the episode, but we cannot go through this episode without mentioning the great movie Car Wash, which that's it for me. I mean, we can just mention it. And then also Breaking Bad's Car Wash, two very famous car washes.
Oh, yeah.
Okay. We did it. If you want to know more about car washes, go get your car washed and see what you think. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.
I'm going to call this first thing I just looked at when I picked up my phone. Hey, guys, longtime UK listener, wanting to add a fact that you miss in your dopamine episode. You mentioned the role of genetics in addiction, which can often be taken as denoting an addictive personality, whilst people's personalities may make them more susceptible to peer pressure, etc. A personality has no genetic influence in addiction, as it isn't biologically inherited. If someone is genetically susceptible to addiction, this can mean they have more receptors in their synaptic clefts or less enzymes, breaking down excess neurotransmitters, leading to heightened effects of substances leading to more dopamine released.
Thought you guys might find this interesting. Always happy to dump random knowledge on and suspecting victims at any opportunity. That is from Steve Guarcio.
Great name, Steve. We're going to call him Steve G.
Steve G.
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Well, Bowen, the Olympics are underway. It's useless to talk about it as a thing. that's happening in the future, when it's happening in the present. And what's happening now is our podcast, Two Guys, Five Rings, is a phenomenon. Two Guys, Five Rings, Matt Bowen and the Olympics.
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