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Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

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Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#421

Post by bux93 »

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…

Four or five doesn't sound like much, but the article buries the lede by hiding this fact in a caption: "The omnipresence of the car wash in American life may be underappreciated: There are twice as many car wash outlets as McDonald’s and Starbucks locations combined" and in the article itself "the sector has been expanding at roughly 5% annually, with some forecasts predicting the market to double by 2030. More car washes were built in the last decade than all the preceding years combined."

Seems a bit much?

The concerns over land use and pollution suggest that the car washes are not paying for negative externalities, removing a natural cap on their proliferation. Smells like market failure. Why wait for the businesses to fail?

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#422

Post by aaron695 »

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…

[dead]

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#423

Post by superhuzza »

rootusrootus wrote: post #298
chaorace wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If torn jeans can be a fashion statement, then so too can an unwashed car. Let them have this, why don't you?

I'm perfectly happy to let them have this, I was just curious why someone would deliberately neglect basic maintenance. It's kinda foreign to me, and frankly I'm towards the lazy end of the motivation scale. Fashion statement is actually a pretty good explanation, thank you.

I live in the UK, where it rains multiple times a week. I mostly drive on paved roads, not too much mud, roads are rarely salted.

Whether I wash my car or not, it changes nothing - the car will get dusty and rained on over and over regardless of what I do. When I first got my car I would wash it sometimes, but it's inevitably going to rain in the next day or so and return to exactly the same state. Washing it once a year is enough to remove any grease/carbon from the roads.

Why bother? I don't think it's actually "maintenance" if it doesn't maintain the car in any meaningful way.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#424

Post by timwaagh »

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 think this is just pushing so called georgist ideology literally nothing else.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#425

Post by guappa »

gwd wrote: post #418
raincole wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, car washing, a business that is infamous for its enormous externalities...

Having a slab of asphalt in the middle of a city instead of something more useful, like an office building, shops, or a block of flats, is a negative externality.

You can only have so many cafes in an area… People won't drink more or buy more.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#426

Post by pjc50 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #382
dinp wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow the idea of perpetually paying property taxes and land value taxes doesn't sound appealing to me, especially since businesses already pay taxes. I don't understand the argument of designing a system to hurt a specific business type such as low value businesses. If there's a loophole such as lack of sales tax for car washes, fix that, but let the playing field remain even. If desirable high value businesses ar…

> Somehow the idea of perpetually paying property taxes and land value taxes doesn't sound appealing to me, especially since businesses already pay taxes. And it doesn't sound appealing to me, as an individual. I don't want to feel like a peasant constantly paying a tax to the monarch/state: so at very least the first property an individual owns should be tax free (not annual land value tax / property tax). I happen…

> I don't want to feel like a peasant constantly paying a tax to the monarch/state

If you're not paying your dues, why do you think the state should have an obligation to protect you and your property?

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#427

Post by mrweasel »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #30

I have actually briefly considered opening a car wash. They seem like just about one of the easiest businesses to run. Minimal employees, low variable costs, likely a reasonable long term investment in the actual rental estate. In many ways, this the same as gas stations, convenience stores, and CVS/rite-aid/walgreens. People don’t want to go out if their way.

That might actually be part of it. If you go to YouTube, things like laundromats, vending machines and CAR WASHES are pretty big with the passive income "movement".

We're seeing more car washes opening up around here, but I think that is just as much about having the area under services for ages. Now I don't have to wait in line for 45 minutes, or risk a fine for cleaning my car in the drive way (which I don't think you should be doing anyway).

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#428

Post by criddell »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #307
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…

Four or 5 car washes for a city of 17000 people? That’s 1 per 3000 or so people, of which I’m sure only _some_ actually own cars to wash (vs, say, children). Assuming one uses a car wash for 10 minutes maybe once a month, the 5 car wash locations have capacity for something like 144,000 washes a month. Basically 10x the need for a town of that size.

There’s another car wash being built in my neighborhood right now. There are now 5 within a 10-15 minute drive from my house.

A few years ago, mattress stores were popping up all around my neighborhood. Today most of them are gone. These things seem to come in waves and I’ve never understood what drives it.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#429

Post by pyrale »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #407
fergie wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably Mister Carwash (the franchise organisation) is leasing out locations to its franchisees, in which case the whole business is absolutely about real-estate.

Except they don’t do franchises and the financial statement says they’re paying rent not receiving it. https://ir.mistercarwash.com/company-information/faq

Who are they renting from, though?

A company I previously worked for did rent 4-5 office buildings at ripoff prices, to a company belonging to one of the board members.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#430

Post by pjc50 »

Spivak wrote: post #209
gunapologist99 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 spotl…

Exactly. I paid a small amount extra for hydrophobic coating 15 years ago, and basically have never bothered to wash the bodywork since then, and only now are a couple of rust problems starting to emerge. Unless you bought a white car, as foolish a project as wearing white trousers, the everyday dust isn't very visible. I find myself manually washing the windows much more often, though, since there cleanliness actually matters.
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