We’re renovating our house right now, and I’m losing. Every trade I call is booked out for months. My contractor told me last week that if I don’t pick by Friday, nothing starts until spring. I’ve been making calls and making them fast.
What looks right? What’s in stock? What won’t hold up the rest of the job? No way to know if any of it is what the house needed most.
I’ve spent my career making sure this can’t happen at the wash. By October I already know what I’m buying with end-of-the-year funds, because I’ve been keeping track since January. That took me longer to learn than it should have.
The Deadline Is Real
Order equipment now and it’s running before the year closes. Order in December and it waits. The write-off environment is favorable right now, which makes the wrong purchase more expensive, not less.
Talk to your accountant before you talk to anybody else. Every wash is set up differently, every owner’s year looks different, and some of us want debt on the books while others don’t.
A good deduction on the wrong purchase is still the wrong purchase. A deadline doesn’t force, or stop, anybody from spending. It changes what they spend it on. They buy what they can see, what everyone’s talking about, or what broke last and made the most noise doing it. The calendar isn’t picking for you. It just won’t wait until you make up your mind.
Check Your List
The wash has been writing your shopping list all year. Cycle counts and runtime hours on every component. Downtime and fault history. Which part keeps putting your tech on a ladder. Which motor is pulling harder this fall than it did in spring.
That’s a list, in order, with a reason on every line. If you’re building your list from scratch in October, that tells you something.
Some years the best buy is a better look at what you already own. Older control gear starts a motor, stops it, and tells you nothing in between. Newer motor control centers keep a record while the equipment runs, so the history is there instead of living in somebody’s memory.
It’s easy to spend a year’s budget on equipment and never a dollar on knowing which to buy next. For some of us, that’s where this year’s money belongs.
Going Beyond What You See
My worst year-end buy looked great from the road. Years back I spent my money on the front of the property. Fresh look, first thing customers saw pulling in. I was proud of it.
Meanwhile a pump had been generating service calls since spring, and it waited another year. Nobody talked me into the front. I bought it because it was the part I looked at every morning.
The thing that breaks gets fixed. The thing that limps along just keeps costing you. For example, a tired blower motor or worn nozzles never shut you down. They take their money a little at a time. A few extra drops of water on a mirror. A little more chemistry than the car needed. A customer who says nothing and comes back less often. Motor load and friction readings show a component drifting months before it quits, and that drift is what you’re paying for.
Talk To Your Team
Your crew already knows what they’d fix first. Ask them.
They’ve been working around the problem since the day it started. If their answer matches what the numbers say, you’ve found your purchase. If it doesn’t, there’s something worth understanding before you write a check. And a crew that gets asked tends to keep looking.
Getting back to where you were and getting better are two different purchases. A deadline makes it easy to call a repair an investment, because the timing works and the money is there. Replacing a worn pump belongs on the list, and it’s worth doing. It also puts you back where you were supposed to be and no further.
The best operators I know spend part of that money on something the customer hasn’t felt yet. Know which one you’re buying.
Evaluate All Your Sites
The site you drive past every morning isn’t always the site that needs the money. The wash we visit most is the one we know best, and the problems we feel are the ones we’re standing next to.
Remote visibility across locations, exception alerts, and performance trending give you the same picture of every site, whether you’ve been there or not. The one costing you the most is often the one you haven’t heard from.
It’s Okay To Stand Pat
Sometimes the right move is to buy nothing. If you’ve been keeping track all year and nothing on the list is urgent, that’s an answer. A wash in good shape doesn’t owe the calendar anything. Talk to your accountant about what holding the cash is worth this year. There’s no rule that every year must have a major reinvestment in it.
My contractor’s calendar is real. He set my date, but he’s never once told me what to build. That part is mine, and at the house I’m guessing. Spray foam, blown-in, or batts? What any of it does to the energy bill? No history to check the answers against, and nobody I’ve worked with long enough to take their word.
At the wash, you have both. Twelve months of it in your reports, and suppliers who’ve known your equipment for years. Read the record before you spend and ask the ones who’ve earned your trust what they’d do. Don’t be afraid to come out of it holding your money. December is a deadline. It isn’t a decision.
Good luck and good washing.
Joining the company in 2000, Anthony Analetto serves as the president of Sonny’s CarWash Equipment Division. In this role, Anthony leads the innovation of new products to drive client success and oversees all operations, engineering, and supply chain management. Washing cars for more than 30 years, Anthony was the director of operations for a 74-location national car wash chain prior to joining the company.