Small Markets — Good Business
By Jim and Elaine Norland

Classic self-serve wand bay and in-bay automatic combo.

Double-up. Two side-by-side in-bay automatics - and still there is a line.

The touchless in-bay automatic tends a big customer. Note the wall cladding.

A 33-year veteran of the car wash industry is helping western Kentucky residents keep their cars looking good with a string of multiple bay washes open 24 hours and attended
during daytime hours. He’s recovered volume to pre-recession levels this year and is moving forward with automatic in-bay units to give motorists more convenience and choice.

Adding features and carefully selecting and training attendants help Randy Travis steadily build loyal customers and revenue for Pro Wash.

Most of Pro Wash locations’ bays in small towns or cities are devoted to self-serve wand washes, but fully automatic bays now contribute 60 percent of revenue.

Randy Travis built and opened his first Pro Wash 22 years ago and now has nine units, all but one in towns with populations of 5,000 to 10,000. The exception is his Pro Wash of Paducah, a city of about 40,000. Each wash incorporates the name of the city or town, such as Pro Wash of Benton.

Most Pro Washes exhibit similar construction and signage, and attendants wear company insignia. Travis is in the process of converting from an older look at the rest of his sites, hoping drivers in the area will recognize and patronize his blue, neon lettered signs and marquees as readily as hungry motorists spot a McDonalds.

Pro Wash has weathered the recent economic downturn far better than some of its more lavish big city counterparts by holding prices down, continuing to modernize and improve sites, and maintaining a cadre of attendants who usually treat the wash where they work as if they owned it. Travis said he took less than a 10 percent hit, and this year has more than recovered volume and revenue to what it was before the recession. Many operators he’s talked to in the North and Northeast have suffered 35 to 50 percent revenue losses. Their prices are about double what he charges.

Car washing doesn’t cost much at Pro Wash, but Travis hasn’t skimped on chemistry, equipment upkeep, or other basics. Four minutes in a self-serve wand bay costs $1.25, only recently raised from $1. His automatics, most touchless but now joined by some friction units, start at $4.50 and go up to $7, with the average ticket ranging between $5 and $6.

“In a car wash, you’re selling time,” Travis says, so he incorporates as many options as possible in his wand washes. “The more time a customer spends in the wash, the more money you make.” While an energetic customer can wash and rinse a car in the first four minutes, choices such as foaming brush, spot-free rinse, tire cleaner, and engine cleaner may lead to a driver spending 15 minutes in the bay.

Impossible to miss at night.

Randy Travis with one of his new hybrid automatics.

One service that comes free at the touchless automatic locations is tire and wheel cleaning by an attendant. “One of the first things a customer checks as he comes out of the wash is the tires and wheels,” Travis knows. “You can have a clean car and dirty tires and you’ll have a dissatisfied customer. We do all we can to make sure a car looks as good as it can. So many newer cars have front disk brakes and the wheels are filthy with brake dust. When we see that, our attendant will go around while the car is in line and clean those wheels with a brush, at no charge.” The attendant may spot and treat other areas that might not come clean with touchless automatics.

The newest equipment at Pro Wash locations is Ceccato friction automatics. “Those machines have tire scrubbers. The equipment will automatically find the front and back wheels and scrub them with a 17-inch brush that rotates first one way and then the other.”

The Ceccato machines are im-ported from Europe and engineered to conserve energy, water, and chemicals while delivering a top quality wash, “very smart machines,” in Travis’ opinion. They are hybrids — a customer can choose a touch-free wash, or a combination of high-pressure and friction cleaning, with or without wheel scrubbing.

Travis also manufactures car wash equipment under the “Pro” brand, but runs his Pro Wash chain as a separate business entity. He began in the car wash industry 33 years ago mucking out waste pits with shovel and bucket at a car wash manufacturing company that is no longer in business. While working there, he learned all he could about the industry from trade magazines and other sources. “I worked there for 11 years, left the company and started my own.” As he began his firm, he built his first car wash.

Over the past 22 years, Travis acquired three existing washes and built six from the ground up. He ran a backhoe and other needed construction equipment, poured concrete, subbed out block work, and roofed those structures.

Travis developed some rules of thumb to size his Pro Wash installations. One such rule calls for one self-service bay for every 1,000 people in a community. Thus a town of 5,000 needs five self-service bays. “If you wash 1 percent of the traffic on the busiest road you can find, you’ll have a super location.”

The rules aren’t foolproof or free of other conditions, he acknowledges. He located a wash on a road with 40,000 cars per day, but it was so close to a signal light that traffic backed up in front of his site and cars couldn’t get in from the other side of the road.

Making sites attractive and the regular enhancement of Pro Wash locations keep each wash looking fresh and clean. All the washes are built with an assortment of decorative masonry block. “I’ve done most of them with a light brown fluted block mixed in with a split face block to get a nice looking design,” Travis says.

“After a wash has been in place for eight or 10 years, the bays show a lot of wear. We’ve now gone in with wide extruded plastic panels that really lighten up the bay.” The walls are white and easy to clean. Travis has installed the material in both self-serve and automatic bays at four sites so far.

Travis tries for minimal and low maintenance landscaping but that also needs upkeep after a few years. One Pro Wash has a nursing home right behind it, and he had to build a sound barrier of landscaping across the entire rear property line. When that got out of hand he and his crew spent two weeks completely replacing the original screen of trees and bushes.

Attendants at Pro Wash sites range from young people fresh out of high school to retired persons looking for part-time income. Their average pay is $8 an hour. While the industry average longevity for such attendants is two years, Travis has some who’ve been with him 10 years.

“We offer them vacation time, bonuses and other rewards, and they join us for Christmas parties,” Travis says. “We typically hang onto our attendants a bit longer.” Many treat the site where they work as their own. “Customers have said to me, ‘I thought so and so owned that car wash,’ but I tell them they just work for me.”

Travis interviews every applicant for those jobs, and makes it clear that bizarre looks such as facial piercing and jewelry just won’t do. “I tell them they’re going to be in front of my customers, representing me. They’re the hood ornament at my car wash. They’re told they have to be friendly and kind, and must know the customer’s always right.” New attendants work with and learn from a veteran attendant for two weeks before being out on their own, knowing that they’re working to serve customers and keep their wash clean and attractive.

Attendants are at each wash from 8 to 4:30 seven days a week. “That’s an $18,000 a year expense,” Travis acknowledges, “but good attendants can pay for themselves by keeping the property clean, seeing that everything is in working order, and assuring customers that if there’s any issue with the wash, they’re there to discuss it. They meet and greet people as they come on the lot and they build a friendship with our customers. Now customers expect an attendant, and they’ll call to inquire if they don’t see one at their local wash.”

Each Pro Wash is open 24 hours, seven days a week, so drivers can wash their vehicles at any time.

To introduce a new Pro Wash, Travis runs ads in local papers and radio spots announcing the forthcoming opening. Coupons are given out to local businesses such as oil change/lube shops and others, giving their customers a $1 discount to visit the wash.

Community groups and causes are well supported at Pro Wash. Local high school sports clubs
and civic clubs like Rotary can promote their presence and take over a self-serve bay for fundraising. Travis also signs up for local sports booster calendars to identify his washes with each city or town. “That’s one reason I’ve incorporated the locality’s name in the signage of each wash.”

Payment options are limited to cash — coin or bill acceptors — for the self-serve bays and vacuums, or cash or credit card at the automatics. Travis hasn’t installed card acceptors on the self-serve bays. He recently started installing dryers after a successful try in one location. “If your competition has dryers and you don’t, they’ll use that to say they’re better. I do have dryers on the new automatics I just put in, and we offer them as a customer option for an additional charge.”

Tailoring his nine washes to fit market needs and customer pocketbooks, Randy Travis provides Pro Wash convenience to western Kentucky motorists and weaves those washes into the fabric of each community. All of his washes are within an 80-mile radius, so he can personally assure that they continue to look good and run well as a welcome business and a driver’s pleasure.

Jim and Elaine Norland are regular contributors to Auto Laundry News