You might not ever get rich
But let me tell ya it’s better that diggin’ a ditch.
There ain’t no tellin’ who ya might meet.
A movie star or may be even an Indian Chief.
(Workin’ at the) car wash.
Workin’ at the car wash yeah!
So sang Rose Royce in their 1976 hit. They’re probably right too, whilst starting a car wash business will make money for you, it is unlikely to ever make you rich. That said, it’s one of those small scale business ideas that sure beats digging a ditch, stacking supermarket shelves or any other McJob.
It’s a beautifully simple small business idea – no business plan required! In the small town where I live a couple of guys (or maybe gals) appear to have executed it perfectly. If you want to know how to start a car wash here’s my thoughts on what they’ve done.
Perhaps recognising that just like opening a shop, the key to the success of the business is embodied in the mantra: location, location, location, they have picked probably the best location in town, a large pub car park on a busy main road near the local train station. As result they get lots of regular passing traffic. There’s plenty of parking for customers waiting to get their car washed. I would also expect that the rent they are paying is relatively low – after all it costs the pub nothing to let them use its car park, whilst at the same time the car wash customers are now potential customers of the pub.
Their marketing is also clear, simple and cheap. They’ve had a couple of large posters made up and stuck them on the fence surrounding the car park which faces the main road. These posters carry the simple, precise message:
Hand car wash £6
While-u-wait
So what could you make running a car wash? Well, the local car wash charges £6 per car, which seems to be pretty standard nationwide. By the looks of it they are spending around 20 minutes cleaning each car. Therefore they are potentially making £18 per hour.
No matter when I pass, be it early morning, mid afternoon or early evening, weekday or weekend they always seem to have a couple of cars being washed/waiting to be washed so it looks like they’re fairly busy. Assuming therefore that they run for an 8 hour day, 7 days per week the business could be turning over up to £1,008 per week. You’ll have to deduct from that a cost for rent, cleaning materials, wages, insurance, assuming you pay others to wash/help was the cars, and so on. So as a small business it’s not going to be making you a lot of money, probably no more than £10/hour max, if you work in the business and probably no more than £500 per month if you own the business and employ others to wash the cars.
However you won’t need much capital to start your own car wash. If you can manage to secure a cheap location or pay a per car or percentage of profits for it then you should be able to start out for less than £100, maybe even for free if you already own adequate car cleaning equipment. Given the low start-up costs, there’s potential to start and run several car washing businesses if you wish to grow the earnings.
You might also be able to grow the profit of each car wash by offering additional, “premium” services, such as an internal valet, polish and so on. Alternately you might find that a local industrial estate provides a fertile place to find customers who need fleets of commercial vehicles cleaned on a regular basis.
So if you fancy a nice simple small business, then perhaps starting a hand car wash is the right business idea for you. If so and you’ve got any questions or suggestions please post them below.
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