As a continuing feature to CAR WASH Magazine, we will 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.

CHAPTER 49

Foam And Weeping In The Bays

It goes without saying that every car wash operator should be interested in producing clean cars as a way of gaining customers and keeping them happy. However, if he is operating a self-serve, the primary thing he is selling is “time”: that is, metered time in the wash bay. If a car just sits in the bay, while the customer sneaks in some of his own brand of mitting out of a bucket, no bucks are being made. But if the customer can be kept busy in the bay on metered time while he is having fun making his car beautiful, then you have a double-header where everybody comes up winners.

And that, in a ‘round-about way, is what foam is all about. Listen to the way Phil Morrison, the enthusiastic former president of NCC, once put it:

“Think of a car wash bay as a money machine where you help customers spend as much time (money) in the bay as possible. A good way to do this is to provide them with foam brushes. Customers like foam because it keeps the cleaning agent in contact with the car surface and then, like in washing dishes, the soaking and the physical agitation of the brush breaks up the dirt film to get better cleaning action.”

According to Morrison’s experience, when foam brushes were installed customers would spend 75 percent or more of the time in the bay working with foam.

For the uninitiated reader, foam is supplied in a self-serve bay via a special soft brush at the end of a hollow wand coupled by hose to a foam generator. And when you see your car all wrapped in billows of foam as you massage your car with it, you just know in your bones that you are doing a first-class job of cleaning your second largest investment. An important role played by the foam brush is the way, in one foamy swoop, it enhanced the image of the self-service car wash. It was no longer a matter of just squirt and run, but to thoroughly shower, gently lather and then finally rinse.

Most of the self-serves that had come to this point probably had a much more sophisticated control system other than a simple pistol grip wand and a coin acceptor. Instead, they offered many choices from a menu of selections such as low pressure presoak, tire clean, high pressure soap wash, foam brush, high pressure rinse and spray wax. This was the kind of a game where customers were having fun and didn’t mind feeding in three, four or more quarters.

One thing became certain! Customers who used foam were much more likely to stay for at least two cycles, or even more. The psychology of using the brush seduced customers into the swing of doing the best job possible, and — as a result — of using more time in the bays. When the problem of the foam brush lines freezing up started, that’s where the weeping came in: that is, providing a steady, slow trickle of water or air through the wands when not in use. Various systems were offered by different manufacturers.

But freezing weather created more problems than just keeping foam brush lines clear. As every car wash operator north of the frost line knows, winter can be the best — and busiest — of times, with road salt to wash off so drivers can see where they are going. But freezing makes ice, and that may not be nice, in a self-serve bay.