I recently purchased my competition in a small town. The wash has 4 selfserve bays and 1 automatic bay. The automatic is an old superwash and the bay appears to small to put another automatic in, and my other wash has a new razor a block away so its kind of pointless to upgrade this automatic. I was thinking of tearing the automatic bay off and just make it a outside bay with higher pressure for large trucks and such. There is no place in the area to wash semi sized vehicles. I was thinking of maybe even having an undercarriage wash they could drive over since it is already there. For those of you who have outside bays, are they worth while and are there any drawbacks to an outside bay?
Do outside bays do much business?
- Thread starter sparkey
- Start date
I have an outside bay big enough for a semi to pull through. I believe it is worth it. Its my second busiest bay! I also encourage mudders to use the outside bay so my inside bays stay cleaner. Plus there is more room in that bay for trailers and oversize vehicles...Ambulance, car haulers, utility trucks, flat bed trucks, etc....
Jim L.
Florida panhandle
I’ve had an outside bay for 17 years. It’s always my lowest money producer but generates bigger messes. I built it to attract boats and motor homes but the majority of the business comes from heavy equipment on a trailer. Once a truck blasts the grease off his 5th wheel on your bay walls you will consider taking down the bay hoses.
Car_Wash_Guy
Well-known member
My competitor about 3 miles away has one. Seems to be pretty busy. I also see the biggest piles of mud there when I drive past on my way to my wash.
I went in one day to wash and check his prices, and saw a guy cleaning a full sized Komatsu Payloader. Left probably 100lbs of mud with grease all over the place. I laughed and felt bad for him a bit.
A few months later, they guy cleaned the payloader in my wash. Less mud, but a ton of grease. I was ****ed.
I went in one day to wash and check his prices, and saw a guy cleaning a full sized Komatsu Payloader. Left probably 100lbs of mud with grease all over the place. I laughed and felt bad for him a bit.
A few months later, they guy cleaned the payloader in my wash. Less mud, but a ton of grease. I was ****ed.
chaz
Active member
In many areas....existing outside bays are grandfathered, but adding one may be an issue with permits these days due to mixing storm water with waste water.
I was kind of looking at this as the drain already exists. I am just removing the building. I usually skip the permits anyways and just do it. No one ever seems to say anything.
Chuckmeister728
Member
Hello Everyone. Last year,After 41 years in business, I finally was able to take over the operation from my Dad. I run a small 3 bay self serve plus one in-bay auto. My end bay is my open bay where I wash all manner of large vehicles. Fully 1/3 of the business!
Also last year, the town ran a sewer line past the front of the place. I have now been told to either fill in the pit with cement and remove the wand or build an addition over it with solid walls!
. Ahhh! Progress!! Chuck.
Also last year, the town ran a sewer line past the front of the place. I have now been told to either fill in the pit with cement and remove the wand or build an addition over it with solid walls!
. Ahhh! Progress!! Chuck.
chaz
Active member
I would think you'd be grandfathered on that outdoor bay?!
Chuckmeister728
Member
Hey, Chaz. There's a whole story behind this. I have to deal with not one but two sewer comms. The one from the town is "still wet behind the ears". The other one (where the treatment plant is located) is decades old. Since they control the plant, they feel they have final say. Long story short, when I contacted the town sewer comm.,one of the very first statements made to me when I explained about my "truck bay"was "Nobody's getting' "grandfathered" ". I smell legal action. There's other issues too. Best save those for another post! Chuck.
PS. I did calculate that based on the sq ft of the bay and the amount of rain fall Here in R.I.that over 15,000 g of water would go into the drain in one year.
PS. I did calculate that based on the sq ft of the bay and the amount of rain fall Here in R.I.that over 15,000 g of water would go into the drain in one year.
Mel(NC)
Member
My wash had an outside bay when I bought it. It was the only open bay in the area and generated good income. However, I ended up closing it down because truckers would blow grease from the 5th wheel all over the parking lot. The outside bay was close to the vac islands and I had a couple of customers track grease into the their vehicles. I think an outside bay would be worthwhile if you could isolate it from the rest of the wash.
Chuckmeister728
Member
The best part is when the truckers use the foaming brush to scrub the 5th wheel!
I.B. Washincars
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The best thing about my truck bay is that it's gone. I had one for 20 some years. It generated most of the mess for the wash, but only a fraction of the income. I also charged more for it so I could funnel the smaller vehicles into the enclosed bays so they didn't have as much of a chance to wallow in the "mess" bay. Finally got fed up and eliminated it...good riddance.
What if your pit wasn't physically connected to the city sewer. What if you put a pump in the pit and only ran it when the spray wand was running? I wonder what the city would say about that?Hello Everyone. Last year,After 41 years in business, I finally was able to take over the operation from my Dad. I run a small 3 bay self serve plus one in-bay auto. My end bay is my open bay where I wash all manner of large vehicles. Fully 1/3 of the business!
Also last year, the town ran a sewer line past the front of the place. I have now been told to either fill in the pit with cement and remove the wand or build an addition over it with solid walls!
We purchased a 4 bay self serve a couple of years ago, one bay is oversized for large vehicles. I know this post is about outside bays, but want to chime in on the oversized vehicle conversation. The previous owner had that bay credit card only and priced differently than the other three by about $.30 / minute. What resulted was semi's and pickups pulling trailers would use the other cheaper bays and were always plugging up traffic flow, hitting the building and such and the big bay had little comparative use. After we purchased the place, we changed the price of the "truck bay" to be the same as the others and encouraged those vehicles to use that bay, more room and easier access, same cost. It does get more use, but is always much messier to maintain and semi's use it because they can wash a tractor and trailer for about a 1/3 of the cost of going to a regular truck wash. The hoses in that bay are longer to get around the big vehicles, so a lot of washing gets done in the driveway even though we always ask them not to. There's always someone who drags the hoses across the fifth wheel and then grease gets on everything. Bottom line is, if we could separate that portion of the business from the rest and value our time, that bay probably costs us money. Seriously considering putting a heavily enforced height restriction on the bay and making it like the rest for smaller vehicles.
MEP001
Well-known member
The few car and truck washes I've seen have done just that, nothing taller than about 9' in the regular bays and the truck bays are priced a good bit higher with more pressure and 30" or 36" wands. I've helped someone with their wash with a truck bay, and it took longer to clean that bay every day than it took to do the rest of the 5-bay wash including trash and sweeping.
mjwalsh
6 bay SS w/laundromat
Sparkey,
We had a bay with an 8 foot high concrete filled wall when we first built in 1968. We are glad 11 years later that we put a roof & doors on the entrance & exit of it. There are slack days where RVs & higher vehicles help mitigate the slowness. It has 11' wide by 13' high doors so we probably avoid a lot of the problems with high stack 5th wheel semis that the others described. The overhead doors can be a challenge to maintain though. I agree that the bay should be able to charge more but ... we can't totally control how the customers react to that bay being a bit more costly to use than the other bays.
mike walsh www.kingkoin.com
JustClean
Active member
There is another option of using a sewer diversion valve.Hello Everyone. Last year,After 41 years in business, I finally was able to take over the operation from my Dad. I run a small 3 bay self serve plus one in-bay auto. My end bay is my open bay where I wash all manner of large vehicles. Fully 1/3 of the business!
Also last year, the town ran a sewer line past the front of the place. I have now been told to either fill in the pit with cement and remove the wand or build an addition over it with solid walls!
It works like this:
The valve is inside the pit. When it rains the water goes straight into storm water. If someone puts a coin in the box it diverts to sewer. It stays at that setting until the pit has filled up so many times. Then it diverts to stormwater again. This is done to prevent any dirt or chemicals that are sitting in the bay to be washed into stormwater.
I've got this valve but wished I'd rather covered the bay. Less trouble and my customers prefer the covered bays anyway.