Okay, it took digging for a while to find the scoop on this one. I heard the rumor that someone had actually attempted to wash cars using…Saw Dust! That’s right, don’t clean your glasses…Saw Dust!

It had been mentioned several times in interviews on washideas.com’s legends page, but no one had the dirt, or dust, on the topic. Then in late January, while interviewing Martin Geller, of Vehicle Wash Systems, it happened.

Geller’s parents had been one of those families that purchased and installed the sawdust car washing system. Now we have a front row seat to the scoop from a direct participant.

The following is extracted from Martin’s interview.

Perry: You have to tell me the sawdust story!

Martin: I remember that very candidly. There were two owners to the site in Boston. One of those guys was my father. We built a new building.

A guy named Garret Mackintosh was the Inventor. My father and my uncle went out to see him. They were convinced they wanted to do something different in the industry. They bought this unit and I remember as a little kid watching this thing come in.

One tank was so big that when it went in the back room, it looked like a brewery back there. That tank was so big that it had to come in on the railroad. A company named Rex made it. It contained a big auger. There were other tanks and the pump station looked like the City of Boston’s water treatment pumping station.

There were seven or eight huge Allis Chalmers pumps in a basement that sucked the water, separated the sawdust and sent it up to the other tanks and the control panel. It looked like a real sophisticated operation for its day.

It did a beautiful job and it shined the car when it was done. The problem with the sawdust was that you just could not keep it out of the vehicle. It would get behind the headlights, in the air cleaner, between the doorjambs. We tried everything to make it work. We even tried using sponge to make it work.

I also remember that, in the first six months, it got so aggressive that it was eating out the pipes, wherever there was an elbow. It was like sandblasting the pipes internally and they would start leaking. We would have to cut them out and weld a new pipe in there.

It was very interesting, but as far as clean, it did a beautiful job.

Perry: You have described one of the issues that had been mentioned about the sawdust system. You could not get the sawdust out of the car. Let me ask the other questions on my mind.

First, was the sawdust under pressure?

Martin: Oh Yeah! I think the pressure was up something over 500lbs.

Perry: What kind of nozzle did it have?

Martin: It had nozzles that were brass and almost looked like a smaller version of a vacuum nozzle, the duck’s foot. It would put out a big pattern. There were pumps in there moving one hundred gallons per minute.

Perry: Next, how did you source that much saw dust?

Martin: As I recall, they were buying it from a company that provided sawdust to market and butcheries and I remember that it came in big brown bags.

Perry: How many big brown bags did you go through in a day?

Martin: That I don’t remember but I know we kept a lot of it around. You were always losing some.

Perry: You were recycling it then?

Martin: Yes, but you were always losing it. It was even behind the headlights when you would take them out.

Perry: How long was the system in before your family decided this was not going to fly?

Martin: In six months, they cut it out.

Perry: That must have been with a heavy heart and a light pocketbook.

Martin: Absolutely! They were a little gun shy after that because after that, Dr. Vining came to them. He was cleaning cars with sound waves.

Perry: Sound waves? Tell us about that.

Martin: I don’t remember a lot about that except you put the car in a room and it cleaned it with sound waves. They did not want to get involved with any more experimental stuff. They were having trouble with smashing the glass windows in the car.

Perry: Like the Memorex commercial from the 60s?

Martin: Yeah, could have been. I know that it was six months to a year after the sawdust thing.

Thanks Martin, for the insights into an amazing example of entrepreneurship that is found in business owners, throughout the car wash industry.

You can hear the interview in its entirety on the Legends page of washideas.com.