121–130 of 615 posts
1) Who is spending $20 a month on car washes? 2) If the problem is that subscription users aren’t paying local sales taxes, why not charge property taxes? (or, Land Value Tax!)
Not me because I don't care about my car enough, but that doesn't seem like a particularly outrageous number to me.
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I wouldn’t think they would be especially cheap to build though? Sophisticated machinery, lots of plumbing?
I think there are companies that build/sell turnkey carwashes. I don't think it's very sophisticated to be honest. It's really just a couple of high pressure sprayers, some soap/foaming sprayers, and a track that pulls the car. It's all technology that's been available for decades. I bet there's a factory in China just pumping out car wash components.
In my city you're not allowed to wash your car in your driveway I guess it's too hard on the storm drains to have soap and dirt and stuff going down them Or maybe city council is just in some kind of racket with car wash owners or something But either way, that's why we have so many car washes here... And it sucks ass
I can wash my car in my driveway, but last summer when my city implemented water use controls (due to drought conditions), they didn't allow it. Oddly enough, they didn't restrict commercial car washes.
1) Who is spending $20 a month on car washes? 2) If the problem is that subscription users aren’t paying local sales taxes, why not charge property taxes? (or, Land Value Tax!)
Automated ones are fine, but what I've really missed since I moved to New England have been the ones where a team vacuums the inside, hoses off your mats, wipes your windows and dashboard inside, etc. Growing up in the West and Midwest, these things were absolutely normal for the first 30 years of my life. Some of them would even change the oil too. But I haven't found anywhere within 50 miles of me that will do it h…
Yes, I remember when I first moved to New England, and asked where I could get a hand carwash. No one had heard of such a thing.
L A U N D E R I N G
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This is interesting, what you mention. In the northern foothills here bordering Phoenix, Arizona, to the north, there are an understandable number of automated carwashes. However, i've found no manual (pressure wash sort) carwashes, which are easy to find in California and Illinois, for two examples. I don't know why this is.
Could it be that single family homeownership is higher there? I can kind of speak for some of L.A.'s use of manual car washes. There's many who live in apartments or places that don't have places to wash at home. Manual car washes fill the void for people that want to clean their own car but don't have space.
This is a big thing in the UK, too. The official narrative here is modern slavery with undocumented migrants. It's the same with sex work, with which is harder to separate between conservative propaganda and reality. I expect the main difference between the US and UK versions are that the latter are typically set up in disused urban plots with pop-up tents and temporary chain-link fences rather than having any invest…
I would have assumed its from the rise of gig workers using private cars. Uber/Lyft need to keep cars pretty clean to not be dinged stars, and even package and food delivery can create more mess which may require cleaning (but mostly taxi service I think). I skimmed the article and don’t see mention of that?
When I worked at a carwash half the cars came from the local car dealerships.
Did the serie Breaking Bad inspire a trend, showing a seemingly innocent/efficient way to clean money ?