Whose chemicals do you guys use?

I am a manager of a 45' express tunnel. Our current chemical supplier is getting pretty expensive and our cost per car is very high. I was wondering whose chemicals you guys use as I am looking to switch suppliers. Do you stick to one company for all your chemicals? Or do you get different products from different suppliers? I appreciate any input.

Consider a branded product with a recognizable name. It may actually cost you more, but they'll often give you promotional material such as signs, banners and paper floor mats which will help up-sales and return customers.

I'm Qual chem and at (retail) average 30 to 43c a vehicle to wash. I like expensive, concentrated products so that I can control my costs in the equipment room with micro-hydrominder tips. (+200:1) I can wash 28 vehicles per gallon of combined products on site. So at my volume levels, my three washes are going through 200 to 300 gallons a month each. The more I store on site and the more concentrated those are...the less I have to pay people to deliver and set up. I like to set the dilutions and not worry about supplies but once or twice a month. There are so many other things that demand our attention.

A good service rep, that monthly monitors your inventory and usage, is worth his weight in gold. That service must be considered part of the deal. No service...do it yourself and save.

Ryko is running a FREE chemical offer on their web site. Up to $800.00 in free chemicals if you are currently using another product. Ryko has always made their own and even though they have always been quality chemicals there have been many improvements in the past two years. I attribute these advancements to the chemical engineer driving the program. I have learned a great deal from him in the past three years. Free is a great price and is a no risk way to try them out.
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If you sell on price you lose on price!

Amen, I prefer high price...that usually means less water, higher dilutions and less frequent shipping. Reduced shipping and handling costs can offset higher prices. I have a used forklift, large storage area, and trailer for bulk receiving, storage and distribution. Every shipping bill has a variable fuel surcharge for the ridiculous price of diesel and it's going to get worse. Ask your supplier for a discount per gallon and free shipping for more bulk. If they won't share the reduced expenses try someone else. As long as you don't have to pay interest on your purchase you will save.

Jim,
It sounds like you have to do a lot of the work yourself! You would love how I sell the Ryko chemicals in our area . It is a quality chemical with a low per car usage rate. The best part is I deliver it for free! I put no stipulations on how often you request delivery or what size order you place. Some sites are not always big profit makers for us but is part of the customer service our customers rely on. I am surprised on the amount of work and equipment you need to keep your cost down. I assume/hope all this extra work is worth the savings it creates.

It sounds to me like Jim knows his stuff. I would rather explain the cost once than apologize for quality every month.

I would say he knows his stuff and is not lazy either! I do not know of any customer of mine who keeps a forklift on site to reduce chemical cost. This sounds like something I would do because I am hands on and want control of as much of my operation as possible. I am amazed at how far he has gone to keep his chemical costs down, I am VERY impressed. I just wanted him to know there are suppliers out there that will do most of the work for free.

Tyler,
We have a W.E.T. here in Michigan too(the anagram stands for something different). They are out of N.J.(?) and they service PDQ's.

Yeah, I think they are Washing Equipment Technologies.

Rykopro, Jim is a distributor of chemicals and equipment (totes and drums)and utilizes the forklift primarily for that business. Although Jim and his sons probably could unload full totes by hand, a forklift is easier on the back.

As a Ryko distributor we get free shipping so we pass this on to our customers by offering free delivery. I guess if I read more posts I may have known Jim was a distributor, but it was not totally clear in this thread.
Thanks for the info, makes a little more sense.

I use Stone Soap, happy with it, I feel its more concentrated then some big name competitors, consistent quality, 75 years in the business... I also buy in bulk and it $aves me. I know how to service my tunnel so I don't need a rep.

When you've got multiple locations it's worth it. Most of our equipment is used...$5,000 forklift (pneumatic tires/gas powered)...used warehouse lifts are even cheaper (check ebay).

Good service is well worth it...but somebodies's got to pay for it. Forklifts are handy, back saving devices around the car wash. We also have 6x6 trailer set up for just pressure cleaning our tunnels, a used 750g ringomatic for mud, a large trailer for hauling totes to disperse chemicals at each site, a service truck with welders, plasma cutter, torch, etc. If you have been in this business over 30, 40, 50 years you learn how to do things yourself. You have to.

You know it costs +$65 to order a liftgate with any shipment. I've found mfrs/distributors that would pass on any savings to me that I could generate for them. There is a dramatic difference in shipping costs between a full truck load and partial. I guess it's because there is only one pick up and one stop involved. I've gotten 84 drums shipped in for a little as $1,600 (>$20 each) in comparision to $200 to ship one. I received one shipment of 2,310 gallons in totes last month for $600, that's like $14.28 a 55g drum. Shipping is going to get WORSE, not better.

check out wwww.freightquote.com or www.echo.com for freight deals.

Taking shipping costs to the extreme, I had a chance to see the shipping charges for a soap supplier. The former warehouse manager would order 2, 3 or 4 pallets as he needed, and the shipping was about $100 per pallet. A half truckload of 12 or full truckload of 24 pallets was only $600. He was adding up to 12% to the chemical cost with shipping charges because he was too lazy to mess with a truckload at a time.

I recently did the math on UPS vs freight and saw that we'd easily save $500 a year if I ordered a pallet of vending instead of 2 or 3 boxes here and there. It didn't take up as much room in the garage as I thought, once I got it neatly stacked out of the way.

You don't need to pay the liftgate fees if you unload the pallet piece by piece.

M Parris, I just received my traditional, Kleen Rite, convention order of vending, a single pallet stacked 6 ft high. With free shipping and bonus cases, I figured to save about $750, off what would have been a $5,000 order. It almost paid for my room at the show.

Thank you Kleen Rite for reducing my expenses to go to every convention.

Thankfully the carpet guy across the street owns a fork lift! It only cost me a free car wash to borrow it! The difficult part is he only keeps a single rail on it for carpet rolls.... makes it tricky... but if you use a chain right you can unload about anything with it.

Unless you want to break apart a pallet of 55 gal drums and drop them off a truck... a lift gate is nice. Maybe jimmy is big enough to muscle one around.. I'm only 130lbs!

My order supplys my wash as well as 3 others, our last order was 14 pallets of 55 gallon drums. Fun!

I use R&L carriers for my chemical delivery. They offer liftgate service at no additional charge. I have a faxed consent for unsigned drop-off on file at their office. They deliver to my house using a short truck and drop it at my basement door. I don't have to have a lift gate or wait around all day for delivery. My freight charges seem reasonable, usually about $250 for about 2500 lbs of chemical. In addition, my chemcial supplier eats half of it, so my freight charges are usually $130 or so.

So...whose chemical do you guys use?

haha, I was thinking the same thing!

Mostly SIMONIZ... for 6 years nearly exclusivly

CarwashGuy, I'll tell mine if you tell yours..... :)

Well..I don't want to mention any names; but I will share this with you...
We have four wash packages; our basic wash is costing us $0.38 per car (not too bad, I guess); our next wash up is costing us $0.51 per car; the next wash up is costing us $0.79 per car; and our top wash is costing us a wopping $3.48 per car. And thats just in chemicals!

Car Wash Guy,

All I can say is WOW! You need to take a look at what you are spending. We are an express with 4 wash choices and our chemical cost per wash is $.15, $.20, $.47 and $1.27. We use Simoniz. I can even imagine how you use $3.48 worth of chemicals in a 45 foot tunnel?

JM

I have been using Blue Coral for about 4 yrs. now. It is costly but it does a good job. Also use cul-mac for some of the lubricating soap. I know we're supposed to keep all this a secret but I don't care and i'm mentioning names.

Don't worry Perry, there's a lot more to cleaning cars than the name of the chemicals you use. I've seen washes using the same brand get dramatically different results. You got to know how to tweak every brand for best results.

I don't think it's an issue for us to say who's chemicals we use, but for those distributors to identify themselves and not misrepresent themselves as owner/operators who stand behind a product. That has been an issue in the past.

As with most things, it's not just the chemical brand, it's the equipmnet, line speed, area of the Country and type of dirt or soils and the operators knowledge of the products he/she is using. Any idiot can put online a chemical or buy a chemical... but to know where to use it and how best to use it is different and take skill and knowledge. This is where a good distributor becomes your partner in sucess!

Every good distributor has been, or, is presently also an operator. Many manufactorers are also operators. It get blurry. I don't think there is any mis-representation on this site. If you think there is, contact Allan and he will deal with it. Bias or favoritism is natural. It's that un-supported sales pitch is what we all should suspicious of. I want to hear from everyone on this site. We need the opinion of mfrs and distrs, they've got a lot of wisdon and experience. Most of us are savy enough to filter out the bad. I like Bill P, bought him a drink at Orlando, but this forum has been more open to mfr and dist input than his in the past. And I think, TCW is better for it. As long as, everything is "out on the table" for discussion, we've got a great place to gather and share information.

Doug, you're right on when you say "it's how you use it". I've got a tool box with about 200 different plastic v-jets(different angles/different gpms) to tweak and adjust my applicators. Those jets detemine so much of the consumption and performance of products. It takes quite a while to figure out the best for each product at the various points of our washes.