Insights on Sites
By Ralph Nasca

Towers enhance visibility and allow for an area on the building to dress with signage, neon, and other eye-catching enhancements.

You can overcome a lot of bad decisions while developing a car wash, but you cannot overcome a bad location and layout. To succeed in these aspects of the development process, apply the following key criteria.

SITE SELECTION

• Traffic count over a 24-hour period to exceed 30,000 cars in both directions.
• Easy site ingress and egress and preferably at two different entrance/exit locations.
• Visibility in both directions (ability to see signage at a distance of at least 300 feet).
• Site location in and around retail traffic and retail businesses surrounded by residential. The higher the density of residential, the better.
• An income level per household to fit the demographics of the car wash model (full service, flex serve, exterior, exterior express and/or self serve). Full serve and flex serve require higher income.
• Like-model competition to be a minimum of three miles away from the site, although there are instances where they could be closer if there is a traffic divider between the two such as a freeway, a river, etc.
• Traffic speed should be as slow as possible. Either a corner site for some of the models or a slightly off corner location is preferable, but not more than three sites off corner. This will help slow the traffic and create more visibility.
• The go-home side of the road seems to be better than the go-to-work side of the road, but this depends on the availability of land that is zoned correctly.
• Use towers or some type of fascia to increase the building’s height. It makes it easier to see and allows for an area on the building to dress with signage, neon, and other eye-catching enhancements.
• Once the site is picked, a survey is extremely important to determine the building set back lines and utility easements, which affect the extent of useable property.

SITE DEVELOPMENT

• The next step is site layout. Turning radius, traffic flow, and the ability for the motoring public to recognize where to go (the entrance), are all extremely important. Customers need to easily understand how to move about on the property. Lots of space and good signage make it easier for them to figure it out — wide traffic lanes, plenty of stacking, and some type of introduction to the tunnel like an archway or a canopy will give them the guidance they need.
• Try to create a traffic flow on site that does not create cross traffic, in other words, a circular motion.
• It is ideal to drive onto the conveyor making a left-hand turn. The turning radius is shorter and customers do not have to look across the hood of the vehicle as they’d need to if it were a right-hand turn.
• It is better to have the driveway feeding the conveyor, i.e., straightening out after the turn so the vehicle is somewhat aligned before loading onto the conveyor. A slight downward slope onto the conveyor makes it easier to load. Motorists control the break more easily than they control the accelerator.
• Good signage and directions from an attendant smiling and talking to the customer is always a plus.
• A clean well-lit tunnel is inviting and less claustrophobic. It also helps to have a separator wall between the wet environment and dry environment of the tunnel where the blowers are located (to minimize the blowers picking up mist)
• Exiting the conveyor, a slight downward slope in the paving makes it easier and more apparent to the customer that we want them to move forward.

Both site #1 and site #2 provide ample inbound stacking space, circular traffic flow, and an escape lane for cars that cannot be washed. Site #1 has four different entrances/exits, while site #2 has to make do with two. Site #1 also features the preferred left-hand turn onto the conveyor. Site #2 has a right-hand turn.

I have never found a perfect site. There are always some type of sacrifices or compromises to be made. Try to minimize them and make it easy for your customer to understand your business, the traffic flow, and how to use the facility.

Ralph Nasca is with ProTech Services Co. Inc. in Lewisville, TX and has been in the car wash business since he was 14 years old. He managed an exterior car wash for four years, owned and operated a full-service car wash for six years, and for the last 23 years has been involved in the development of over 200 conveyorized car washes. Ralph has been on the Board of Directors of the Southwest Car Wash Association for three years.