The Self-Serve
Mushroom Generation
Chapter 48

Anyone who has ever visited a mushroom growing house, or who has otherwise been witness to the way mushrooms can suddenly start to peep out of the soil and then break out like a forest of delicate white parasols, can only marvel at this magic power of life springing into being in a matter of hours. But then, these structures so delicate and white, how quickly they can turn brown, tattered, torn and ugly!

There is a certain similarity between this sudden mushroom growth and demise and the appearance of the early self-serve car washes.

The first wand-type car washes were simple in construction, required few pieces of equipment, required less space, and were much less expensive to install than an automatic tunnel wash, whether full service or exterior. They started out to be really popular at only a quarter (or two) for 5 minutes of squirting.

They seemed almost easier to build and operate than a laundromat, and many were operated in tandem with laundromats.

It was largely because of this parallelism that the National Carwash Council had been started as an offshoot of the National Automatic Laundry & Cleaning Council.

The role of the self-serve and its early growth can’t be expressed better than in the March 1968 ACWA Journal editorial, which follows in part:

“The coin car wash business must be defined as an operation that attempts to remove dirt and soil with high-pressure spray of heated water and detergent.

The coin car wash attempts to produce a car wash of some quality for a very low price. The coin operated car wash equipment permits the user to wash his car, truck, motorcycle, bicycle or anything portable.

It has been extensively advertised as a very promising business at a fairly low investment for the potential operator.

The coin operated car wash business is a complete business in itself. It is now expanded on an even more modest scale by manufacturers and suppliers installing units of some kind in service stations, parking lots, next door to laundries and virtually any place where a water and electrical hook-up can be found.”

This editorial then continued and touched upon some of the growth potentials of these new types of self-serve car washes as follows:

“In 1963, the first so-called coin-operated installations began to appear across the United States. According to industry sources, by 1964 there were approximately 3,000 units in operation. And by 1966 there were about 10,000 coin-oprated units in operation. An industry spokesman projects that there will be over 30,000 installations in the next five to eight years.”

These growth potentials did not turn out to be anything in the nature of a myth. Instead the self-serves started to spring up all over the landscape like the proverbial mushrooms. Many of these installations were cute little affairs, painted bright colors and looking so welcoming and so charmingly cheap! Just a quarter or so for the wash, and then maybe just another quarter (sometimes as little as a dime!) for 5 minutes of fun with a vacuum. Car owners took to them readily, especially because they were so novel.

When they worked they were fine, but like all machines – and especially customer-operated coin-ops – the equipment tended to be subject to malfunctions of every imaginable kind, from coin acceptors not activating the pumps, broken wands, low water pressure, jammed vacuum hoses, exhausted detergent supplies and flooded floor drains, to overflowing dumpsters and burnt-out lighting fixtures.

As a result, many self-serves started to get bad reputations and – as usual – this had a tendency to spread to all self-serves, regardless how well maintained. But with so much absentee ownership, neglect tended to become the order of the day. The less business they attracted, the less attention they received, so that many of the marginal installations started to resemble abandoned businesses, as in fact many soon became… just like brown, tattered mushrooms that had lost their delicate pristine whiteness!

Yes, there were many problems that needed to be solved in the early coin-op self-serve days, and that ACWA editorial stressed several key points:

“The coin car wash industry has grown tremendously over a very short period. Unfortunately, its growth in number of units does not adequately show its growth in number of cars washed by intelligent, successful ventures. The number of closed or empty operations, especially in some areas, is staggering and this can only be attributed, in some respects, to run-away building construction and poor planning on the part of potential investors.

Many operators start out in business under the mistaken impression that this equipment is virtually maintenance-free and the business can be run on the part-time basis of occasionally checking soap supplies and emptying coin boxes. The many closed signs on operations of this type are due to this unfortunately inadequate information on the part of the owner or operator.”

Serious problems such as these led many serious investors to look elsewhere. But others, assisted by a group of creative manufacturers, stayed with it long enough to be able to participate in a fantastic revival of the self-serve.

We occasionally provide excerpts from The Great American Car Wash Story. Former ICA Executive Director Gus Trantham and veteran commercial writer John Beck wrote this book in 1994. It represents the most complete history we have found of the industry in
North America. Enjoy.