In the car wash industry fixed site carwash owners just cannot stand the mobile car washes that go to office buildings and wash people's cars in the parking lot. In fact the International Carwash Association and many other regional carwash associations are trying to figure out ways to get the mobile carwash businesses to stop washing cars because they are taking away business.
Many carwash owners have got together and tried to lobby local governments to crack down on mobile carwash owners stating that they are polluting the environment by allowing wash water runoff to enter the storm drain, which is against the Federal Clean Water Act. They also claim that the mobile carwash owners are using all kinds of chemicals in soaps and allowing those to pollute the environment.
The truth is that fixed site carwash owners use up to $20,000 per year in soaps and chemicals and the average mobile carwash owner uses about a gallon of soap every three weeks and it probably cost them about $15 and therefore that is about 17 gallons of total soap usage over the course of a year or about $260 worth.
What some environmentalists may not know is that a little bit of soap is good for the environment because it breaks down all the crud and other pollution that should not be there in the first place such as the oil that leaks from cars onto parking lots and gets washed into the storm drain by the first major rainstorm.
It is amazing that fixed site carwashes cannot handle the competition and are trying to peddle their environmental worthiness to attack the little guy. The reality is that all the chemicals in soaps that the carwash owners use and all the dirty water that they produce creates a huge issue for public water treatment plants and if you ever go into a carwash at night it stinks so bad you have to leave right away. A lot of people don't want to talk about these issues but it is the truth. Please consider this in 2006.
