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.

Chapter 44
THE BIG BOYS DIP IN THEIR TOES

Independent car wash operators who took their work seriously as professionals might have been both startled and disturbed back in 1972 if they had been able to read the following words contained in a confidential report being circulated by one of the major petroleum corporations:

“Until now, virtually all car washes have been owned and operated by individual entrepreneurs. This has resulted in as many varieties of car wash quality and service ‘image’ as there have been car washes.

“By launching car washes as a salaried operation with rigid standards of quality backed up by a respected national name, we are breaking with this precedent. People can now, confidently depend upon the same quality of service over and over again, backed up by a national corporation.

“Car washes that have incorporated gasoline sales in the past have usually closed down during inclement weather. This has been because their chief interest has been in selling the car wash, not the gasoline.

“Our concept is based upon the reverse philosophy, and units will remain open regardless of weather. It is desirable to develop this concept under direct company management so as to ensure that this full time service be thoroughly proven.

“One thorn in the side of independent car washes has been the quality of the help attracted by such ‘now-open, now-closed’ operations. By establishing a full time operation, this thorn can be blunted and dependable, controllable employees attracted. This results in a quality of service appreciated by customers.”

There would have been quite a few horrified gasps heard around the car wash world if these words had been read and weighed against the power of the source: big oil! Was the age of the independent car wash operator about to come to a crashing end?

…

Actually, there was a true revolution changing the face of gasoline marketing. There was a time that service stations lived up to their names; they really were centers of all kinds of automobile service, repairs and accessory sales. But this was changing. Extensive new car warranties and improved operating efficiency were resulting in fewer calls to these “service “ stations, and the service bays themselves tended to be idle much of the time.

So some service stations found it profitable to install roll-over type car washes in these otherwise idle bays.

With high-volume pumping of gasoline and fewer amenities such as windshield wiping and checking oil levels, the idea of washing cars on the same premises began to become more and more appealing to the big oil companies.

…

This “revolution” was getting ready to be staged back in 1972. But a couple of years later another revolution burst full bloom upon the world stage that became known as “the oil crisis.”

The price of gasoline, and it seemed practically everything else, started to climb at a dizzying rate. The problem was not selling gasoline, but finding enough to sell to the waiting lines of automobiles.

While some of the petroleum companies continued with their plans to add car washing to their services, the projected giant take-over never did eventuate.

Instead, another struggle known as divestiture appeared in an attempt to make it impossible for the big oil companies to carry oil everywhere from holes in the ground through the refineries to the grave (so-to-speak) out of automobile exhaust pipes.

The Greater Washington/Maryland Service Station Association carried the divestiture battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978, and won a favorable local decision. Then the U.S. Senate tried to take this to the national level with divestiture bill 540 which somehow got lost in the debating chambers.

Meantime, the EPA introduced another factor, which may for all time result in car wash operators getting out of gasoline sales.

That is, a proposed requirement for a $1 million insurance policy to cover the installation of from one to twelve gasoline storage tanks in any given operation.

Thus it would seem that car washing has, in a round-about way, achieved an industrial independence as a professional service that can stand on its own. This has been occurring not only on the gasoline front, but in terms of the need to preserve the life of what, to most individuals, is their second highest investment, the family car and the extraordinary advance in the services being rendered.