Hows business?

Man, I've been thinking about this for a long time. Building a quick lube next to my wash. I'm having a hard time pulling the trigger. With the war in Iraq and uncertainty in Iran, with oil on the rise I don't have that warm fuzzy feeling like I would with a wash. Hows business? Is it slower now?

---
- |
---
- |+
---
- |
---
- |+
---
- |
---
- |-
Mine is doing fine. Up 30% this year over last in volume and gross sales. But I'm in a high growth area and only into my 4th year so I'm not a good measure. There are a lot of warning signals that the $ and the economy are not as strong as the government would like for us to think. For example the debt is overbearing, the $ is not as strong (and Bourse is threatening to go EURO). China holds too much of our debt. Saving in the US is at an all time low and personal debt at an all time high. Job creation is at a net loss at over 1 million in 6 years. Lower & middle incomes are stagnet (if you factor in inflation...it's actually lower). Oil prices might tip this economy over the edge... it's going to prevent the US from going to Iran in the way we did Iraq....oil disruption now would be disasterious to the economy.

The latest economic report on thursday sent the market down to near Jan 1 levels and 2005 DOW was flat.

Save you money, watch real estate prices over the next 6 month - 1 year. Gold has been inching up.

Car washes are not inflation proof! If gas soars this summer it might impact some of us harder than others.

We have to get a handle on this debt. We have to get our trade exports up to 80% or more of imports.

I don't know if this will help but I have an oil comapny distributor in Austin,TX. In a meeting two weeks ago they told me they were diversifying their business format because of the unreliability of oil, particularly related to the oil change market. These are sharp people and if their read on the future of the market is not good it would be a fair warning sign.

Hope this info helps.

Stuart

Thanks Stuart. Any info helps.