Blue Print Friday

How This Car Wash Makes $6M a Year

Check out how John D’Eri started a car was business that now makes over $6M a year

The Car Wash Business

The car wash business can be an extremely lucrative and automated business model. The process involves servicing a clients dirty car by cleaning through your car wash. There are different types of car washes from the big automated ones, to the small do it your self car washes. You can then offer additional services such as vacuuming, interior cleaning, waxing, and products.

Revenue

A typical self serve car wash can make anywhere from 40,000-100,000 a year, and if position in highly populated city can make over 500k a year.

Operations

The daily operations for this business is extremely simple and can ran with as little as one employee depending on the type of car wash. Some daily operations cost are.

• Water

• Detergents/Chemicals

• Supplies

• Equipment maintenance

• Utilities

• Rent/Mortgage

• Inventory

• Employee wages

• Advertising and marketing

Start up Cost

John spent all in around 5 Million dollars to get all 3 of his car washes set up. Lets break down the numbers.

Real Estate - 1,300,000

Site Development - $200,000

Equipment - $1,000,000

Building - $2,000,000

John specifies that you don’t need 5 Million to get started, and that you can get into this business with as little as $500,000 through an SBA loan.

Pros

Once you’ve established this business model it can be an extremely lucrative income source. Another upside to this business model is the ease of operations. The process is the same every time and dosen’t require a lot of labor intensive work.

Cons

The biggest con to this business model is the upfront capital required. There really is no way around it as car washes require a lot of capital to get up and running.