Tech & Innovation
Self-serve car washes are getting their sparkle back as a new generation of investors — both individual entrepreneurs and private equity professionals — put their faith in the future of this popular and durable segment of the industry.
Two weeks of rain had given way to sunshine and Carolina blue skies, and Dan Schiermeyer was a happy camper. By 11 a.m. on an August Friday, all five self-serve bays and the in-bay automatic at his Suds N’ Shine were full up, the vacuums were humming, and the weekend forecast promised more of the same.
Schiermeyer had more than the change in weather to smile about: Since buying the business from its original owner in 2020, the Cornelius, N.C., self-serve car wash had blown past initial growth projections and was on track to nearly quadruple gross sales and net operating income in less than five years.
Suds N’ Shine may be the exception rather than the rule in a segment of the car wash industry sometimes unfairly perceived as run down, undercapitalized, underperforming and just plain unloved compared to the sexier express tunnel side of the business, but it’s getting more company every day.
Industry insiders say self-serves are experiencing a mini-boom of their own as new entrants and some legacy operators scramble to modernize and refresh their washes — long-overdue improvements in some cases — to satisfy changing customer needs and boost the return on their own investments.
They’re upping curb appeal with new signage, fresh paint and manicured landscaping, installing new in-bay automatics (IBAs) or upgrading old ones, updating payment options, adding air dryers, ceramic sealants and other amenities to bays, and launching membership plans to keep customers coming back.
“We’re seeing tremendous activity,” said Marc Tyndale, codirector of equipment and director of strategic partnerships for Kleen-Rite. “The self-serve and in-bay automatic industry has moved faster in the last five years than it has in the last 40.”
Marious Sjulsen, chief investment officer for real estate investment firm EquityMultiple, agrees self-serves are having “a moment” — driven at least in part by generational transition as older operators cash out, providing opportunities for younger entrepreneurs to invest with an eye toward the future.
“I do think the self-serve space is pretty attractive, because of the low cost of acquisition and because of the return on investment that you can generate on it,” Sjulsen said. “With a little bit of spit and shine, you can take some of these older car washes and with not a lot of effort make them quite nice.”
With their growth potential, attractive margins and built-in advantages such as 24-hour service, self-serves are even attracting a smattering of interest from private equity investors, though not on a level that could be deemed a trend and nothing like the capital infusion that helped propel the express boom.
“At the end of the day there will always be a market for people who do not want a machine touching their car.” — Nick Rossi, Ardent Advisory Group
Willow Oak Partners, for example, owns 16 self-serve washes in the Carolinas and Virginia. Each have been acquired over the past three years and currently operate under the Royal Rinse brand. David Head, co-managing partner of the boutique investment firm along with Ryan Henderson, said they’re just getting started.
“Self-service washes are often unfairly burdened by a reputation that they’re all dilapidated, not modernized, nor well kept,” Head said. “While true in some instances, in general, we don’t think that’s an accurate universalization. There’s a strong, large and growing customer base that seeks self-service, particularly if you programmatically reinvest into it.”
SOLID SHARE OF MARKET
Indeed, self-serves occupy a significant niche in the professional car wash market, with 16,250 self-serve washes nationwide, compared to 17,500 conveyor car washes, according to U.S. Census data. Self-serves with IBAs and IBA-only washes together comprise 30,000 to 40,000 locations, Tyndale estimates.
According to ICA’s 2025 Q3 PULSE consumer survey, 17% of car wash customers said they used a self-serve to wash their car most often — a number that’s jumped up from 13% in Q3 2024 and 12% in Q3 2023. Add in occasional users who normally choose a tunnel option, and self-serve’s market share is even higher.
While ICA data shows 52% of self-serve customers have incomes under $50,000 and 48% drive cars 10 years old or more, compared to 35% and 24% of tunnel users, regular users aren’t just the “stereotypical someone in a jalopy,” said Nick Rossi, VP of business development for Ardent Advisory Group.
They’re also the third-shift workers who like being able to wash their car any time of day or night, drivers of large trucks and commercial vehicles that may not fit in a tunnel, owners of high-end cars that worry about tunnel equipment marring their vehicle’s finish — and DYI-ers who just enjoy doing it themselves.
“We’re seeing tremendous activity. The selfserve and in-bay automatic industry has moved faster in the last five years than it has in the last 40.” — Marc Tyndale, Kleen-Rite
Living in affluent Scottsdale, Ariz., Rossi said he’s just as likely to see Ferraris, Porsches and Bentleys at a local self-serve wash as the kind of cars the rest of us drive, and “they’re spending more to do it in the self-serve bay than they would driving through the tunnel getting the best (highest-priced) wash.”
“I think the competitive advantage that the self-serves with the IBAs have is that they’re typically 24/7, so that’s where they can really set themselves apart,” Rossi said. “And at the end of the day there will always be a market for people who do not want a machine touching their car.”
In North Texas farm country, James Lavender, owner of the two-bay Lindsay Car Wash he bought in February, is excited about the potential to serve vehicles that tunnels can’t always accommodate, including tractors, RVs and outsized pickups with trailers hauling boats, farm and other equipment.
Along with the unique benefits that have helped self-serves carve out a loyal customer base, Royal Rinse’s Head says the value proposition — giving customers the ability to “do what effectively is provided at any other express wash or fullservice wash for a fraction of the cost” — is compelling.
“Seven dollars in a self-serve bay or $12 in a touch-free in-bay, with the vacuum included, provides the customer with materially the same result as a tunnel wash, with all the benefits of being touchfree,” Head said. “Comparing that wash to a 140-foot, friction-based tunnel, there can be a minor quality difference for difficult-toremove particles, but generally touch free IBA customers can enjoy 95% to 100% of the quality of a modern, friction-based tunnel for 25 cents on the dollar. And self-serve is totally different: You control the entire process, washing your car exactly how you like, with all the modern tools, for a very affordable amount.”
TAPPING THE POTENTIAL
The uninviting image of poorly lit, trash-strewn locations with banged-up coin boxes that eat quarters, spray guns and hoses that leak and foam brushes that don’t foam has been largely self-inflicted, but new operators are betting money spent on improvements will yield gains far offsetting their investments.
Kleen-Rite’s Tyndale estimates that as much as 90% of the recent investment in self-serves is in the form of new and in some cases legacy operators rehabbing existing washes. “Greenfield” — newly built — washes are less viable due to high construction and financing costs and a dearth of prime locations.
Top investment priorities on operators’ wish lists include adding new in-bay automatics for the first time, upgrading existing IBAs and providing cashless payment options they may not have offered previously by adding credit-card readers and point-of-sale systems that can accept other forms of digitized payments.
Schiermeyer, a former manufacturing engineer for Joe Gibbs’ NASCAR racing team who also manages investments in residential rental properties and a self-storage facility, bought Suds N’ Shine with his brother Ben in September 2020 and immediately started implementing his turnaround playbook.
The 2007-vintage wash had a lot going for it — relatively new infrastructure with wide 12-foot-high bays to accept large vehicles, an in-bay automatic already in place, and a choice location on a busy road with new development popping up all around. But there was plenty of room to up the game.
Schiermeyer installed new signage out front and in the bays, trimmed back vegetation to improve visibility, added credit-card readers to the vending machine and vacuum stations, and added air dryers and higher-quality soaps. The biggest improvement — replacing the aging IBA — came in March 2022.
Two changes dramatically improved cash flow. Switching credit-card timers in the bays to a “count-up” method boosted average spend per wash from $4 to $7. The new IBA, on track to wash 20,000 cars this year, was key to launching a membership plan that now stands at 350 members and growing.
Despite increasing Suds N’ Shine’s revenue nearly fourfold, Schiermeyer sees additional growth opportunities. With credit card transactions now accounting for 75% of all income, he’s hoping to mine the data for spending patterns that will help him improve both the customer experience and profitability.
Lavender’s Lindsay Car Wash is typical of many older self-serves. Built in 1982, the wash had followed a familiar downward spiral after decades of getting little love from previous owners. Lavender said that when he bought it in February, the farmer who sold it to him “had it running but it wasn’t running well.”
Locals called it “the quarter car wash” because it still took only quarters and cost only a quarter to start and a quarter per minute. Soap was mixed in a plastic bucket. The boiler was kaput. The coin boxes were battered from years of abuse, and customers had grown used to foam brushes that put out little foam.
Lavender added a credit card reader and a bill changer, replaced the coin boxes, boosted soap levels, got the hot water working, installed a timer that beeps when time runs out and ran new wiring to the selector panel so he can expand the number of wash options he can offer to customers.
And he raised prices, something many operators are afraid to do. Actually, reluctance to raise prices or reinvest in the business are key factors that can hinder operators’ success, according to a Kleen-Rite podcast hosted by Tyndale that outlines a “SWOT analysis” to assess self-serves’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Lavender didn’t get a single complaint about the increase — to a dollar to start, a dollar for three minutes — and business has improved steadily since completing the improvements. He’s thinking about widening the bays and adding a bay without a roof to accommodate tractors, RVs and other large vehicles.
Kleen-Rite’s Tyndale, who runs seven washes of his own, including self-serves and IBAs, under the Fast Lane Auto Wash brand in southeastern Pennsylvania, also has boosted sales with a recent rehab and rebranding effort. Selfserve success is there for operators who take risks and sweat the details, he said.
“If you have an IBA and self-serve that’s on a main road, and good traffic flow, it is a simple recipe to get the curb appeal, get the new equipment in, keep them clean and treat them like a business and not a hobby.”
‘JUMPING OVER DOLLARS’
From his experience working with self-serves, Tyndale figures about 20% of operators are running their washes professionally and investing for the future, while the remaining 80% “have to be pulled along,” in many cases unwilling to modernize out of fear the investment won’t pay off in higher volume and profits.
Count Affordable Car Wash among the 80%. Located on North Austin’s busy “Taco Mile” and tucked behind an auto lube shop run by the same family, the wash has seven self-serve bays but no IBA and still accepts only quarters and bills for payment, said Adnan Qureshi, who manages the family wash.
Qureshi attended The Car Wash Show 2025 in Las Vegas and returned with hopes of installing credit-card readers, but the family’s priority has been on repairing damage from vandalism and making do with existing equipment. No investment in modernizing the wash has been made in more than two decades.
“It’s money that we’re losing by not accepting other forms of payment, but unfortunately the last thing on our list is to update and upgrade the car wash,” Qureshi said. “It’s embarrassing that we only take quarters and dollars when everywhere you go now is tap-to-pay.”
The wash location, blocked by the Rapid Lube from the view of passing motorists, also hurts business. Qureshi wants to boost visibility with new signage on the street but sees no point in doing that until the family, owners of the business since 1994, agrees to spend the money to upgrade the wash itself.
The predicament facing Qureshi leaves many self-serves foregoing new revenue — “jumping over dollars to pick up pennies,” as Tyndale puts it in his podcast — but the same reluctance to spend money to make money is creating opportunity for the Schiermeyers and Lavenders and other new entrants in the space.
“There’s so much runway for this segment of the business because it’s so different and they can compete (with express exterior and full-service tunnels),” Tyndale said. “Their biggest competition is usually themselves.”
A FRAGMENTED FUTURE?
Industry observers expect self-serves — traditionally the domain of owner-operators — will remain fragmented because transaction sizes are too small for most private equity fi rms looking to deploy capital and can’t match the predictable cash-fl ow of express tunnels with robust membership programs.
“I think it’s going to continue to be for the car wash owner who wants to be hands-on, that wants to put in 5-10-15 hours a week at their wash, and I think it’s a great opportunity for somebody wanting to get into the space,” said Ardent Advisory Group’s Rossi. “I think there’s a lot of money to be made there, too.”
But their lack of appeal to private equity investors also means self-serves will remain an attractive opportunity for entrepreneurs to get involved in the car wash business at a relatively low cost of entry and with the ability to generate significant free cash flow quickly.
While the buyer of an express tunnel might pay $10 million or more, some self-serves can be acquired for under $2 million or even $1 million, and even with likely expenses to upgrade aging infrastructure, “the cost-benefit analysis starts becoming pretty meaningful,” said EquityMultiple’s Sjulsen.
For Schiermeyer, who paid $825,000 for Suds N’ Shine and has poured more than $170,000 into his new IBA and other improvements, the investment has “gone really well” — so much so that he’s been scouring the area for additional self-serves to buy and rehab.
“I think there’s still tons of opportunity in the space,” Schiermeyer said. “Based on the ones that I’ve looked at, there are a lot that are still poorly run. It’s just being able to find the right deal and make the improvements.”
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‘Customer Obsession’ Mantra Drives Investors Behind Fast-Growing Royal Rinse
While most observers agree that private equity interest in the self-serve space is tepid at best, one boutique investment firm is showing the way, building a significant footprint for its Royal Rinse brand and counting on a relentless focus on “customer obsession” to set itself apart from the competition.
Royal Rinse, which already bills itself as “The Southeast’s Largest Self-Service Car Wash Company,” currently has 16 self-serves operating in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina and as of late August was under contract to buy four more.
The company is owned by Willow Oak Partners, founded in 2023 by co-managing partners David Head and Ryan Henderson. Since then, Willow Oak has raised two funds totaling $55 million to invest in existing self-serves, most of them owned by operators aging out of the business and looking to cash out.
Willow Oak Partners doesn’t follow the typical private equity playbook of “build it in three years and sell it in six,” Head said. With a group of patient investors willing to wait for the value of the car wash portfolio to compound over time, it’s in the self-serve car wash business for the long haul.
Nor are Head and Henderson arms-length investors. Both are involved directly in Royal Rinse operations. By design, all washes are located within a couple hours’ drive of their Charlotte base, allowing them to personally oversee rollout of their “customer obsession” success strategy across the brand’s footprint.
“We hold a strong opinion about how our washes should look and how they should feel and how they should operate to do right by the customer and the communities in which we operate,” Head said. “The only way you can achieve that is with a significant on-the-ground presence.”
Head and Henderson typically spend two to three days a week in the field talking to the regional managers and site managers whom Head describes as “mission-critical to our customer obsession” because of their role in collecting the intelligence needed to improve operations.
As a real estate investment first and foremost, Willow Oak has focused its self-serve acquisition strategy on fastgrowing markets — including Charlotte, Raleigh, Richmond and Charleston — and compelling sites within each market that pose high barriers to entry for competing washes, Head said.
Having 16 — soon to be 20 — self-serves in the Royal Rinse fold makes it easier to reinvest in each site, standardizing equipment such as point-of-sale systems to create efficiencies and bring all washes up to brand standards. Most locations, for example, now offer the tap-to-pay functionality customers want.
Along with a cosmetic refresh that includes new signage, fresh paint and rebranding, Royal Rinse is also adding in-bay automatics, hand dryers, graphene and ceramic coatings, upgrading vacuums and vending machines to accept credit cards, switching to higher-quality soaps, and introducing new in-bay membership plans.
Royal Rinse has also universalized in-bay subscriptions across the brand footprint, allowing customers with a subscription purchased in Charlotte, for example, to access an in-bay from Harrisonburg, Virginia, all the way down to Charleston, with the value compounding as new locations are added, Head said.
Head doesn’t foresee large private equity firms pouring money into self-serves because transaction sizes are so small — Willow Oak acquires most of its washes one by one — and the typical PE firm’s exit timetable doesn’t allow enough time to build a portfolio of any value. But he’s fine being the outlier.
“Cutting half-a-million-dollar equity checks for each wash, it takes a long time to get there,” he said. “We’re OK being patient and building what is hopefully a world-class portfolio and platform over the long term.”
