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Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

bloomberg.com

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Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#201

Post by gunapologist99 »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #181

I really hate sounding like a broken record but this is just another instance of how low property taxes and the absence of land value taxes massively benefits low-value businesses. The real business of car washes is real estate, it's profitable enough to get 3-4x leverage with a low interest loan. TBH I think real estate used to have high information asymmetry between local residents and large investors; low property…

> I take pride in the fact I haven't been to a car wash in probably 3 years and have likely gone myself less than 10 times total.

You don't come off here as well as you think you do.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#202

Post by gunapologist99 »

sroussey wrote: post #162
sroussey wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, sorry I thought the article had more detail. There is an accelerated depreciate for car washes that runs out in 2026 I think.

Here is a better article: https://engineeredtaxservices.com/the-unique-benefits-of-cos... > The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 made a significant change in this area, currently allowing businesses to write off 80% of the cost of qualifying property in the year it's placed in service Why depreciate over 39 years when you can do 80% in one year.

Same article, right?

And there's nothing in there to do with car washes specifically, though? Just general MACRS etc?

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#203

Post by lolinder »

godelski wrote: post #190

How does an article like this not mention that if you rent you probably don't have a water spigot and area you can wash your own car. I'm not saying this is causal, but it seems like a reasonable question that I'd want addressed. Is it related? Bloomberg has not previously been shy about discussing the decreasing rate of home ownership and renting.

What decreasing rate of home ownership? Nationwide the rate was only ever higher during the housing bubble [0], and the Midwest specifically (which is where this town is located) tends to have the highest affordability in the country [1].

There are certain areas in the country that are struggling with low housing affordability and high rates of renters, but that can't explain excess car washes in the Midwest.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

[1] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fp...

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#204

Post by bsdpufferfish »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #175
kuchenbecker wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked at a carwash half the cars came from the local car dealerships.

I wonder which is more wasteful: parking decks for dealerships or washing hundreds of cars every month.

sales costs money

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#205

Post by michaelmrose »

smeej wrote: post #118

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…

Sounds fantastic sadly it's easy to see why it doesn't exist.

Oil changes require following environmental regs, careful disposal, paying for same and it makes a 1000x more sense to integrate them with a business that actually works on cars and can capture additional dollars for other maintenance and repair.

You also want a comparatively skilled and trustworthy individual not someone who moved up from vacuuming to oil changes and a business than can easily write a check if their employee does mess up your expensive asset rather than an owner who will have to decide between writing you that check and paying their rent and employees. This is also why you don't want to get your oil change at walmart.

If you could have it the oil change would have to cost $50-$60 to justify its existence because there would be no chance of capturing additional revenue. If it had full service and 2 people spent 15 minutes we are talking about another $30. This is only true if you can actually keep relatively busy and aren't implicitly bearing the cost of labor while people are waiting for customers.

Then there is competition from both auto repair who are offering 29.99 oil changes and 5-9.99 automated car washes.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#206

Post by paulmd »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #201
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #181

I really hate sounding like a broken record but this is just another instance of how low property taxes and the absence of land value taxes massively benefits low-value businesses. The real business of car washes is real estate, it's profitable enough to get 3-4x leverage with a low interest loan. TBH I think real estate used to have high information asymmetry between local residents and large investors; low property…

> I take pride in the fact I haven't been to a car wash in probably 3 years and have likely gone myself less than 10 times total. You don't come off here as well as you think you do.

Ya, he’s bragging about letting his frame and underbody rust out.

(must be nice to live in a place without salt on the roads!)

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#207

Post by hansvm »

godelski wrote: post #190

How does an article like this not mention that if you rent you probably don't have a water spigot and area you can wash your own car. I'm not saying this is causal, but it seems like a reasonable question that I'd want addressed. Is it related? Bloomberg has not previously been shy about discussing the decreasing rate of home ownership and renting.

Actually, why don't apartments offer a spigot and outlet somewhere nearby where you can park a car?

In my mind, it's kind of like how above $20/hr or so (and >= 5ish employees), it's a no-brainer for businesses to pay for lunch. It's more cost effective for the business to pay, and it results in less dead time and more camaraderie. The experience of automatic or manual car washes is bad; your car doesn't get that clean; it's shockingly expensive for what you get; you don't have the proper tools/time to clean the interior or wax and dry the outside; you have a variety of quickly deprecating fake-currency scams (where the unit costs are a prime number not dividing the amounts you're allowed to use to pay for the fake currency, and the fake coins only sometimes work in the machines and are replaced every 2yrs or so to deprecate anything you may have bought in the past); and so on.

Like, I average $5/mo or so cleaning the cars in my household. Doing it at my apartment with my own tools would be a strictly better experience. Most tenants I've talked to agree. In our complex, that's a (ballpark) >=$12k/yr opportunity. Is it that expensive to place a spigot and outlet close to a private road? Have bad actors made this infeasible? What actually keeps landlords from providing that amenity?

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#208

Post by throwaway22032 »

atrus wrote: post #168
logifail wrote: post #89

> There are four full-service car washes in town, with a fifth on the way; three are bunched up on a mile-and-a-half stretch of Route 14. Social media complaints about car wash overkill spurred town leaders to take action. Four (or even five) doesn't sound that much? What's the actual problem here? How is a local politican supposed to determine what is the correct density of any particular type of service within her…

> If the market were too small, the weakest would fail, right? Right? I find it interesting that we have sayings like this, and sayings like "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." > why should a politician need to step in to regulate, rather than letting the market decide? Because the market doesn't price in externalities. Sure the market will figure out which car washes live. But what abo…

The entire point of working for a living instead of e.g. subsistence farming is that you can simply switch jobs if it's not going well.

As an adult if you can't weather a couple of weeks of unemployment you've seriously screwed up somewhere - probably overcommitting to expenses based on assuming that your income is guaranteed.

The mindset that someone should be stopped from even offering a job because it might not be forever is completely ass backwards. It's never forever, act accordingly.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#209

Post by Spivak »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #201
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #181

I really hate sounding like a broken record but this is just another instance of how low property taxes and the absence of land value taxes massively benefits low-value businesses. The real business of car washes is real estate, it's profitable enough to get 3-4x leverage with a low interest loan. TBH I think real estate used to have high information asymmetry between local residents and large investors; low property…

> I take pride in the fact I haven't been to a car wash in probably 3 years and have likely gone myself less than 10 times total. You don't come off here as well as you think you do.

I really don't get what this is implying, commuter cars are essentially self-cleaning. You're driving on roads where the worst that's gonna happen is some salt buildup in winter that isn't worth washing off in winter (and isn't rusting in winter) and then it washes itself off first rain of spring.

This feels like one of those iceberg tips where I'm really glad I'm not in the kind of social circle where having a spotless car matters at all.

I've driven four going on five cars to 200k miles having never gave any shits about car washes and haven't had any problems.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#210

Post by bandyaboot »

beejiu wrote: post #147
logifail wrote: post #89

> There are four full-service car washes in town, with a fifth on the way; three are bunched up on a mile-and-a-half stretch of Route 14. Social media complaints about car wash overkill spurred town leaders to take action. Four (or even five) doesn't sound that much? What's the actual problem here? How is a local politican supposed to determine what is the correct density of any particular type of service within her…

Yep, businesses naturally cluster like this. It's called Hotelling's Law: https://sciencetheory.net/hotellings-law-1929/

> Especially true in the American two-party system, political parties want to maximize vote allocated to their candidate. Political parties will adjust their platform to comply with the median voters’ demand. The Comparative Midpoints Model represents this idea best: Both political parties will get as close to the competing party’s platform while preserving its own identity.

On the contrary, the ever increasing dysfunction in US politics is largely because the players have hacked their way past the constraints of this model.

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