There appears to be quite a discrepancy of data about the number of carwashes in the United States. Then there are different types of carwashes; Fixed and mobile. Amongst the fixed site carwashes there are coin-op self serve washes, Flex Service Robotic, Conveyor Conventional, Gas Station Rollover and the Touchless automatic.

You can pick up a carwash survey from any of the four major industry magazines or the co-marketed service industry magazines like; C-Store News, Oil and Lube News or any of the Auto Service Industry Association magazines and there are about seven of them. Some of the surveys in these magazines have broken down by region. Percentages of course are worthless unless broken down by area, even a manufacturer, better know that if it is going to set up a dealer network, sales teams or use existing channels of distribution. Those who study the industry need to be cognizant of the available data and its worthiness.

Can you even define what a Conveyor is? Most cannot and even if you could, does that mean your definition equates to the survey you are reading this week; if not how can you quote numbers? What is a conveyor car wash; a tunnel system with a conveyor in it? If so, many types of carwashes have some sort of conveyor systems. If you mean a Tunnel wash, which is not a rollover might have a conveyor in it so I believe that the percentages and numbers are irrelevant. Imagine using this data to decide to go into the conveyor system for carwashes manufacturing business. If you are in the car wash business the rollovers are not as important because they wash more cars at full-serve conveyor carwashes you see? Rollovers at service stations are under utilized.

So if they had 50% of the "equipment market" and only wash 25% of the cars, which are washed, then the data without strong regional variation caveats is unreasonable and contain irrelevant data sets. And remember 40% of the US population will not go to a car wash because they quite frankly suck, service is bad and the cars are not so clean when completed and they damage cars, rollovers scratch since they are poorly maintained. Full service carwashes often steal stuff out of cars due to poor, crappy labor. 40% of people do NOT go to a car wash and only 15% are regular customers. Why? Car washes are hurting consumers with shotty service, the current customers want service and quality and price. Some one needs to deliver that. Those who study the carwash industries need to the differences of carwashes and their attributes and weaknesses. Think on this.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/