Automatic Overhead Cost

Besides Land, Price of Equipment what is the cost of washing a car in an automatic?

Trying to gauge a possible ROI on this wash component?

How much maintenance work is required on them?

These are just some numbers by the seat of my pants. I use a touchless in-bay, my particular unit used about 85 gallons for the top wash. Water and sewer were 1.1 cents per gallon, which is high.

Good Presoak could cost about .40-.50, tire cleaner about .15 and CCP about .10, trifoam too about .10. Total chemical cost could be .60-.80 cents, maybe even as high as a dollar in some instances. These are for chemcials at very effective levels of performance and good show. Some operate for less

Depreciation and deferred maintenance on automatic is often overlooked. You need to squirrel away about .75 per wash to pay for repairs and pay for an eventual replacement unit.

As you can see the total real cost of a good auto wash could fall in the 2.50-3.00 range. But we typically get $8 so there is a decent markup there.

Good Stuff there GregPack!

QUESTION: Can you recycle water in an automatic car wash?

If so do alot of people do it? If not, why not?

At this time I prefer to pay extra and have fresh water. I would only consider reclaim right now if mandated, or the unit virtually paid for itself through a reduction of impact fees (when building).

Handling and using reclaim water to me is just another quality variable I prefer not to deal with, especially in a touchless wash. My experience has been that reclaim advocates will tell you it's a piece of cake, but then you start to find out the reclaim "tail" begins to wag the carwash "dog". You find yourself being limited on what chemcials you can use because some aren't compatible and you may have to switch to a less effective or more expensive brand. However, some people swear by reclaim and insist it easy and doesn't impair wash quality.

thanks Greg good points - roughly what % of IBAs run reclaimed water? 50%? 75%? 30%?

I would say less than 15%. I only know of two people with reclaim in a touch free automatic. The ones that had to put it in when building usually disconnect it after a year or so of babysitting it. I'm not saying its not a good thing to do. I'm saying if you watch it like a hawk, Daily, weekly, monthly, it may pay to do it. But how much is your time worth.