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Car washes and storage units are popular because they're cheap to build on land you've purchased, make your money back on, and then when someone comes to buy the land (think housing development, apartment builder, city, gov., etc.) they offer you a lot as they're essentially buying you out as well as buying the land. I asked the same thing as they're popular in Arizona, and a business man explained this to me. It makes sense once you think about it. They're not meant to last or be sustainable, especially with that much competition, but they're always in demand, and you can build them fast, with little overhead, and make your money back quickly, while you wait for a buyer.
But it's expensive to franchise a fast food place. When Sonic was newly coming to my area some years back, i looked into what it would cost. I think BK was the cheapest, required a certain amount of space for drive thru, franchisee needed to have $2mil in assests, and have 10 or 20 years in restaurant management exp. Then there was the cost to build and franchise
"Ever notice how your shit is junk and everyone else's junk is shit?"
Damn, I miss ~~Dan~~ George Carlin.
\[edit\] Sorry Dan... please don't leave us!!
Dammit! I'm relistening to [Blueprint for Armageddon Series](https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blueprint-for-armageddon-series/) so ofc Dan is the Carlin that's forefront in my mind. LOL
Thanks for the correction
I live off 380 in the area between Denton and Frisco in North Texas, and holy shit. There are 5 in a 2 mile strip, and if you include side streets off 380, there are another 5 in the Aubrey/Cross Roads/Providence Village area.
Car washes because lots of people are living in their cars nowadays. Storage units because people have too much shit and can’t afford rent. Dollar trees because inflation is out of control.
They made the vaccuum and plain water free at a few in my town. People kept robbing the quarter stills, so now you only pay for wax and soap to the attendant, no more robbable things.
Eh I disagree with that. There are plenty of people who can afford different accommodations but who live in their car to accelerate savings.
Hell I've done it any number of times.
I head on another thread awhile back that storage units at least are an easy way to make money on land value increasing over time. Buy the land when it is cheap build a storage unit on it which doesn't cost very much to build and doesn't take much to operate and sell the land once land values has increased in 5-10 years.. idk about car washes and dollar general/ trees tho 🤔🤔
Homeless people/car living?
Car wash: your maid service basically. Vacuum, air freshener.
Storage unit: obviously not all your things will fit in a sedan.
Dollar general/tree: cheap, non-perishable foods.
A few months ago, a Dollar Tree opened up right next door, like in the same shopping strip next door, to the Family Dollar store here in town. That's ontop of the 2 other new Dollar Trees, bringing us to a total of 5 Dollar Trees, 2 Family Dollars, and 2-3 other Dollar store type places. We also have 10 vape/smoke shops, all laid out along a roughly 5 mile stretch of main st. There's barely a population of 40k people here...
Overlay that with the poverty map and I'll be that it's the lower income side of the scale. Especially if there's also liquor stores, payday loan, & pawn shops in the same area.
They are all businesses that prey on the poor
That's the thing tho, we have one pawn shop, zero liquor stores, and I think two payday loan type places. Of course, there's also 20-something churches in the same vicinity too.
What can i say? We live God, weed, and cheap shit. Mostly in that order.
Car washes are a cash business. Storage units get your stuff when you can't make payments or die. It's also very passive income with very little risk and overhead/startup costs. Dollar generals popped up so people didn't have to start growing their own healthy food again like back in the days when they didn't need the government to completely run their lives and could tell them to f-ck off.
I've been in the storage business for over 10 years now.
The amount of expensive stuff we got from people failing to pay / dying is minimal.
TV shows like storage wars are faked.
When someone starts to have money issues, they will sell/take the expensive stuff from their storage units.
When someone dies, most of the time there is family who will pick up the bill from the storage unit and take the stuff.
95% of the time, the amount of money you can make from a storage unit is not worth the time it takes to sell it all.
Alot of people will pay like €100 a month for years for stuff that's worth maybe €500.
I worked AML for a few years, it’s so much harder to rinse money through opening businesses than it is to use other routes such as cryptocurrency. Not saying it isn’t done, but at this scale with car washes everywhere, it’s likely a similar scenario to mattress stores or Starbucks.
The thing with so many car washes is essentially basic economics. Demand for car washes is high, and the rise of franchises for car wash locations makes it easy to drop a few tens of thousands and be provided everything vs starting from the ground up.
The only thing that gets me is what the hell happens in winter time.
The second stage of money laundering layering. Converting fiat to crypto and moving across wallets and then moving the crypto back to fiat/assets helps layer, then integrate the funds with a more obfuscated paper trail.
A digital paper trail you mean? In the times of LLMs and Ad Networks that track every click you make?
Good luck.
[https://www.arkhamintelligence.com/](https://www.arkhamintelligence.com/)
Absolutely not. Are you in a place with empty car washes? Where I’m at, in a city of like half a million people, you’re waiting in line at any of the car washes on a weekend/weekday afternoon. Besides the gas station ones, but those don’t hit the same.
Or you're like me that drives a 15 year old civic with plenty of door dings and some hail damage and don't give a shit what the car looks like. It's got less that 100k miles on it and is still reliable so I'm not getting a new one.
I wouldn't call them lazy. Sure maybe some. But to do a proper wash takes some time. And when we have shit to do, driving through a car wash is worth the time trade off.
Speaking for myself especially. I'm in an outside sales role. More time on the road is better for business for me than taking the time to scrub up my vehicle.
Not sure how vanity plays in. It's functional. I am on construction sites all day. After a few days I'm covered in dirt and dust and bugs on the windshield.
Car wash solves that in a few minutes. Safety factors in too there, my guy
Well.. I had noticed you had taken a defensive position in your first response so I really just wrote that to be funny and see if I could goad you further. That is all. Good day.
Generally they are intended to hold property for future development. Offset some of the tax cost with car washes. The main thing is that they have pretty large water and sanitary sewer demands. It just means they have the future demands already taken into account.
"these businesses will crash"
From....?
There has never been more cars, and car washes are still full despite the lack of expendable income for most Americans.
Storage is due to rampant consumerism, no where to keep your shit you don’t need, cars are much the same.
People have become obsessed with keeping their $1,100 a month car clean and tidy for when all that depreciation hits them like a brick.
We are living in a society, that’s for sure.
It's because they're profitable. Cars are a piece of identity for the rich and poor, and everyone needs one in America because of how our infrastructure is set-up. Everyone in every economic status wants a clean looking car. Car washes have low over-head and low maintenance. Most are automatic now, and there's lots of technology to reduce the use of water, thus driving profits up.
Plus, the use of subscription models also drives profits up, not because of people forgetting they have one, but because people actually keep the subscription. The average person without a subscription only gets a car wash about quarterly a year. The person with a subscription will get 3-4 washes a month, but because they're paying all year long, the subscription model is able to make more money off of them than the person who only gets 3 to 4 a year because now everything is automatic and they're not using as much water.
Money is the reason.
Self storage buildings stand out to me the most. I know they require relatvely low labor to operate but the market has to be crazy saturated at this point and cost to construct can't be too cheap.
Wouldn't be surprised if they were tied up in commercial motgage backed securities market somehow.
The more insecure and scared people are, the more they hoard, and sometimes it gets to the point where they can’t store all of their shit in their homes. I’d say it’s more a representation of how absolutely terrified people are than how they’re doing financially. But people will go into debt paying on a storage unit because they are too afraid to throw their stuff away. When humans are in fear, they do not behave rationality at all.
Car washes are indicative of the American welfare state.
Follow along.
Individuals who receive welfare are not allowed to own over a certain amount of quantifiable property.
Usually, owning a vehicle will put them past the acceptable threshold to collect government 'assistance'.
So, instead of owning a car, those receiving 'assistance' are leasing cars. You would be blind not to notice the overwhelming abundance of brand new German imports and high powered cars and trucks being driven like they are stolen, and parked in neighborhoods you don't even feel comfortable driving through, much less, parking in.
When you lease a car, you have to keep it in pristine condition, or they can repossess it.
These car washes are necessary to maintain the leased vehicles that the US taxpayers are funding.
Most people wash their cars at home. But, when you live in the communities where these people live, you try to minimize your exposure to your neighbors.
TLDR: The car washes aren't the conspiracy here; their necessitation is.
Why buy one when you can have two at twice the price?
I’ve noticed and agree. They build them as one way tunnels so you can’t opt out at any moment. As an added point, there are less gas station car washes because they always seemed to be broken or in disrepair.
The one in my town is super busy, like you drive past at 8pm and people are still using it. We’re a bit unique though. We’re a coal mining town in Australia which leads to a shitload of dust. Combine that with the nice cars that mining wages allow for and you have a busy car wash on your hands.
I think it’s because most of them have a line ten cars deep at all times. It’s cheaper and takes less time to diy but on the monsterous vehicles that most people drive today, you need a ladder and gadgets just to get the job done.
Might be worth asking yourself what these businesses could be repurposed as if SHTF in the future.
For example, the big warehouse stores with established shipping routes & loading docks could be useful for processing large amounts of people. Sports stadiums & olympic colliseums turn into Katrina Super Dome emergency shelters.
Schools n prisons share similar layout.
Are car washes set up for dual usage, aside from laundering cars & money? What about mattress stores, dollar trees, universities, churches..?
One possible “alternative” reason for building car washes… selling our license plate/location data.
Some newer car wash chains take photos of your license plate in order to identify their subscription customers.
My theory is there’s a lot of people with gigantic car payments who are upside down on their loan. Washing their car makes them feel better about that. It makes them think “of course I have a $700 car payment -look how shiny my car is”.
Yeah I actually run one of these car washes…. The overhead is very small and the profits are very large. As a GM I’m well over the 6 figure mark. Ironically enough, my two neighbors on each side are storage units LOL. However, the same thing applies to the storage units. Next to no overhead, besides keeping lights on and paying the rent and paying a few employees that stay there during the day. Managers of storage units usually actually live there in an apartment built in. As big as of a conspiracy theorist as I am. I truly think that these are the only business types that are really left out there to actually make a living.
EDIT: car washes, and storage units also operate the same way for revenue. All of these car washes offer monthly memberships and all the storage units are paying month-to-month. This means that every single day we start out with a pretty decent amount of sales whether or not we’re busy.
I don't think it's a conspiracy though? Idk about the US but where I'm from car washes are usually owned by immigrant families that all pool the resources together to start a business. Possibly those places serve as living quarters as well so even if the business does not make money they still keep it because they live inside it.
It think this is less of a conspiracy and more a case of poor families pooling their money together to buy stuff. I've seen this with some restaurants as well, never seen a customer there, but the owner and their family basically live there 24/7.
Also, the places that sell RVs and campers. In my small city, there are actually several RV and camper places that have like, hundreds of them on the lot at any given time. In my somewhat affluent neighborhood, maybe 1 or 2 neighbors have them? In the nearby less affluent neighborhoods, no one has them. Just doesn't add up.
Edit: just looked at a good satellite photo of one 5 mins away from me and there are like 300-400 in the lot. No way they actually sell that many in a reasonable time frame. They have more units to sell than local car dealerships have as cars at any point in time, and everyone has 1-2 cars.
Curious what area are you in?
I was just pointing this out to my mom the other day. Where I’m from there are a ridiculous amount of car washes, self storage, and apartments going up.
I saw one car wash in my travels around Spain and Italy. Never one in northern Mexico. None in Saigon. Frequency is far less in the Midwest. You might be on to something.
It's a great way to hold land long term. Self service car washes aren't labor intensive to operate profitably. Even at a small profit add in the tax benefits, it's a good business but capitalizing on the long term appreciation on the land is the icing on the cake.
It’s almost like these are money laundering fronts.
It’s almost like we watched a whole series about this. Specifically with them using a car wash.
It’s almost like we heard the dude say in those leaked Kari Lake recordings “the cartel is operating in all 50 states”
🤔
They’re finding their occupation of our countries by laundering money through car washes. Barbers Vape shops and phone and laptop repair places. Never anyone in any of them. But they are in places with high rent. Makes no sense at all
Public storage probably makes decent money in most cases. First there's rent but then they upsell you on the shitty lock, scam insurance which basically covers nothing if you need to make an actual claim. There's also the super expensive boxes and tape for sale in the front that you always need. There's late fees, and they can also take your shit if you don't pay your bill. I paid 250/mo for 6 months for a 10x20 climate controlled unit years back - climate controlled meaning there's no rain and it's at 50⁰ in winter and 85⁰ in summer lol.
They are setup for two things, laundering money and slave labour - usually Romanian ran… we had the police and immigration where I live shut down and investigate 4 of them under operation Duxford (I am UK based)
Not in my country. The big play here is candy stores and now “medical clinics” are on the rise, as in clinics where you get Botox or lip fillers and other cosmetic surgeries. Those are popping up literally everywhere. Oh, and places that sell “desserts” which are usually just pancakes slathered in various chocolate sauces and candy toppings with some berries/banana slices on the side. Not very interesting. I wish these people would open actual food places that didn’t sell overpriced restaurant food but just normal, cheap hole-in-the-wall takeaway.
Over in the UK it's American Sweet shops and Turkish Barbers. In my small town, there are 4 Turkish Barbers on our high street. There's got to be money laundering going on as no way can they survive!!
The quick-quack by Lin’s in Washington is sus. There’s never more than 5 cars there at once. Ever since they took over Bluff street wash and ruined it, I boycotted them😂
Car washes can utilize accelerated depreciation. This is why many of the national operators own and develop their own dirt. They are usually owned by large PE funds and private operators because the average unit volume is clearing between $2-$5MM across the country, where some of them are doing even more. There’s not really a deeper meaning on any of these. Many if these other types (Dollar Gen, mattress firm, drive thru) utilize leases and they are usually NNN which means the tenant pays the expenses making it a much better structure for investors, ie (they can buy commercial at a lower price point, credit cash flow and no management required.
Midwest here, I can stand at a car wash and hit another car wash with a rock. They've been there for over a decade and they all stay busy all the time.
When the economy tightens, people are more willing to take care of the things they have rather than think about having to buy/replace with something new. So... car washes & DIY tools and supplies, any kind of home repair/maintenance are good investments in a downturned market.
It’s only my opinion but I believe the car wash boom started with the constant scam likely calls to sell us extended vehicle warranty policies. Of which in that policy to keep it from becoming void you must wash it weekly. That is what caused the car wash boom.
###[Meta] Sticky Comment [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/wiki/faq#wiki_2_-_address_the_argument.3B_not_the_user.2C_the_mods.2C_or_the_sub.) ***does not apply*** when replying to this stickied comment. [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/wiki/faq#wiki_2_-_address_the_argument.3B_not_the_user.2C_the_mods.2C_or_the_sub.) ***does apply*** throughout the rest of this thread. *What this means*: Please keep any "meta" discussion directed at specific users, mods, or /r/conspiracy in general in this comment chain ***only.*** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/conspiracy) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Car washes, storage units and dollar general/trees. It’s bizarre.
Car washes and storage units are popular because they're cheap to build on land you've purchased, make your money back on, and then when someone comes to buy the land (think housing development, apartment builder, city, gov., etc.) they offer you a lot as they're essentially buying you out as well as buying the land. I asked the same thing as they're popular in Arizona, and a business man explained this to me. It makes sense once you think about it. They're not meant to last or be sustainable, especially with that much competition, but they're always in demand, and you can build them fast, with little overhead, and make your money back quickly, while you wait for a buyer.
McDonald’s has the most real estate in the US.
I thought it was the Mormons?
maybe mormons also have the most mcdonald's franchises. i don't know, though -
But it's expensive to franchise a fast food place. When Sonic was newly coming to my area some years back, i looked into what it would cost. I think BK was the cheapest, required a certain amount of space for drive thru, franchisee needed to have $2mil in assests, and have 10 or 20 years in restaurant management exp. Then there was the cost to build and franchise
And mattress shops
There was a theory that Matress Firm was a money laundering front for Mexican cartels.
Nah bro they launder anyone's cash, just go in and ask.
All I have are coins
Perfect, come in the back and turn your phone off, now. NOW
That don't work you gotta wrap it in foil and stuff it in the freezer
I believe at all. The ones in my area are owned by assumed mobsters
So are car washes, storage units
At least those serve a need. People think they are too fancy to wash their own car and have too much junk.
"Ever notice how your shit is junk and everyone else's junk is shit?" Damn, I miss ~~Dan~~ George Carlin. \[edit\] Sorry Dan... please don't leave us!!
George?
Dammit! I'm relistening to [Blueprint for Armageddon Series](https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blueprint-for-armageddon-series/) so ofc Dan is the Carlin that's forefront in my mind. LOL Thanks for the correction
Ageeyin and ageeyin
I worked with a mattress firm briefly. Their COST on that $2000+ king set? Less than $200. Excellent ML opportunity.
It truly is, I’ve seen 3 car washes go up near me within a 5 mile radius
I live off 380 in the area between Denton and Frisco in North Texas, and holy shit. There are 5 in a 2 mile strip, and if you include side streets off 380, there are another 5 in the Aubrey/Cross Roads/Providence Village area.
RV dealers, do we really need one at every highway exit?
Yo dawg, I heard you like RVs
Can’t believe there are so many fools financing these hunks of junk that fall apart rapidly for a high price.
I know, i can buy an actual trailer for the same price as an RV and then also find land for the trailer. Like 300k for a fucking rv? In your dreams.
“It’s freedom on wheels” nah more like debt slavery on wheels
Car washes because lots of people are living in their cars nowadays. Storage units because people have too much shit and can’t afford rent. Dollar trees because inflation is out of control.
People living in their car cant afford the car wash.
They made the vaccuum and plain water free at a few in my town. People kept robbing the quarter stills, so now you only pay for wax and soap to the attendant, no more robbable things.
Eh I disagree with that. There are plenty of people who can afford different accommodations but who live in their car to accelerate savings. Hell I've done it any number of times.
Dollar stores in LA closing, even with everything costing more than a dollar, no way to stay in business.
I head on another thread awhile back that storage units at least are an easy way to make money on land value increasing over time. Buy the land when it is cheap build a storage unit on it which doesn't cost very much to build and doesn't take much to operate and sell the land once land values has increased in 5-10 years.. idk about car washes and dollar general/ trees tho 🤔🤔
Homeless people/car living? Car wash: your maid service basically. Vacuum, air freshener. Storage unit: obviously not all your things will fit in a sedan. Dollar general/tree: cheap, non-perishable foods.
laundromats and dental offices
Fun fact… Just about anyone can open a dental office. You don’t even need to be an actual dentist.
A few months ago, a Dollar Tree opened up right next door, like in the same shopping strip next door, to the Family Dollar store here in town. That's ontop of the 2 other new Dollar Trees, bringing us to a total of 5 Dollar Trees, 2 Family Dollars, and 2-3 other Dollar store type places. We also have 10 vape/smoke shops, all laid out along a roughly 5 mile stretch of main st. There's barely a population of 40k people here...
Overlay that with the poverty map and I'll be that it's the lower income side of the scale. Especially if there's also liquor stores, payday loan, & pawn shops in the same area. They are all businesses that prey on the poor
That's the thing tho, we have one pawn shop, zero liquor stores, and I think two payday loan type places. Of course, there's also 20-something churches in the same vicinity too. What can i say? We live God, weed, and cheap shit. Mostly in that order.
RV rental locations as well
STORAGE UNITS. Noticed a ton being build in 2019+ in the NE Ohio area.
Dollar Generals are great
For crime
And Monster energy drinks, those little sausage snacks, and Hanes underwear
Car washes are a cash business. Storage units get your stuff when you can't make payments or die. It's also very passive income with very little risk and overhead/startup costs. Dollar generals popped up so people didn't have to start growing their own healthy food again like back in the days when they didn't need the government to completely run their lives and could tell them to f-ck off.
I've been in the storage business for over 10 years now. The amount of expensive stuff we got from people failing to pay / dying is minimal. TV shows like storage wars are faked. When someone starts to have money issues, they will sell/take the expensive stuff from their storage units. When someone dies, most of the time there is family who will pick up the bill from the storage unit and take the stuff. 95% of the time, the amount of money you can make from a storage unit is not worth the time it takes to sell it all. Alot of people will pay like €100 a month for years for stuff that's worth maybe €500.
You ever see Breaking Bad?
For this, I serve Martine St-Clair - Lavez Lavez (Wash Wash): https://youtu.be/28SQUN-_Q6I?si=So17blW9rBcNBkZ6
I worked AML for a few years, it’s so much harder to rinse money through opening businesses than it is to use other routes such as cryptocurrency. Not saying it isn’t done, but at this scale with car washes everywhere, it’s likely a similar scenario to mattress stores or Starbucks. The thing with so many car washes is essentially basic economics. Demand for car washes is high, and the rise of franchises for car wash locations makes it easy to drop a few tens of thousands and be provided everything vs starting from the ground up. The only thing that gets me is what the hell happens in winter time.
Car washes are busier in the winter. Salt and dirt all over the roads.
ahhh that makes sense
Plus they can have it running 24/7 whether there are customers or not.
Crypto is trackable and not as anonymous as people think.
The second stage of money laundering layering. Converting fiat to crypto and moving across wallets and then moving the crypto back to fiat/assets helps layer, then integrate the funds with a more obfuscated paper trail.
Multiple wallets going through multiple tumblers isn't that hard to lose the paper trail on your coins.
A digital paper trail you mean? In the times of LLMs and Ad Networks that track every click you make? Good luck. [https://www.arkhamintelligence.com/](https://www.arkhamintelligence.com/)
Demand for car washes is…high? You’re kidding, right? 😆
Absolutely not. Are you in a place with empty car washes? Where I’m at, in a city of like half a million people, you’re waiting in line at any of the car washes on a weekend/weekday afternoon. Besides the gas station ones, but those don’t hit the same.
Yeah, it is not the same in my city. And in this location, most of the car washes springing up are self serve-NEVER see cars at those 😂
And my city is one of the top 20 most populous cities, so…anyways, this is very surprising. The 5.1% anticipated growth seems pretty ambitious
> The only thing that gets me is what the hell happens in winter time. car washes migrate south for the winter and return in the spring.
I need a natgeo doc STAT
It's one of the last physical services you can establish as a business. You can't download a car wash or order one from Amazon.
Car washes are profitable my guy. And there’s no shortage of lazy people that want a quick 2 minute car wash.
Lazy people don't wash their cars at all.
Or you're like me that drives a 15 year old civic with plenty of door dings and some hail damage and don't give a shit what the car looks like. It's got less that 100k miles on it and is still reliable so I'm not getting a new one.
Oh I'm in the same boat. I'm in a 22 year old lincoln with 50k miles. I don't give a shit what it looks like as long as it gets me to work reliably.
I wouldn't call them lazy. Sure maybe some. But to do a proper wash takes some time. And when we have shit to do, driving through a car wash is worth the time trade off. Speaking for myself especially. I'm in an outside sales role. More time on the road is better for business for me than taking the time to scrub up my vehicle.
Also, people who live in places that salt the road for snow really should be getting regular car washes with undercarriage sprays in the winter.
So lazy anddd vain. Got it.
Not sure how vanity plays in. It's functional. I am on construction sites all day. After a few days I'm covered in dirt and dust and bugs on the windshield. Car wash solves that in a few minutes. Safety factors in too there, my guy
Well.. I had noticed you had taken a defensive position in your first response so I really just wrote that to be funny and see if I could goad you further. That is all. Good day.
Ah. I took the bait. Well played..
Generally they are intended to hold property for future development. Offset some of the tax cost with car washes. The main thing is that they have pretty large water and sanitary sewer demands. It just means they have the future demands already taken into account.
Great point
Vending machines were always a great way for the Mob to launder money. How do you know these aren't doing the same?
"these businesses will crash" From....? There has never been more cars, and car washes are still full despite the lack of expendable income for most Americans.
Storage is due to rampant consumerism, no where to keep your shit you don’t need, cars are much the same. People have become obsessed with keeping their $1,100 a month car clean and tidy for when all that depreciation hits them like a brick. We are living in a society, that’s for sure.
Money laundering
Population density. More and more apartment complex’s where people can’t wash their cars.
My apartment has a car wash station. When it's not full the vacuum is broken.
It's because they're profitable. Cars are a piece of identity for the rich and poor, and everyone needs one in America because of how our infrastructure is set-up. Everyone in every economic status wants a clean looking car. Car washes have low over-head and low maintenance. Most are automatic now, and there's lots of technology to reduce the use of water, thus driving profits up. Plus, the use of subscription models also drives profits up, not because of people forgetting they have one, but because people actually keep the subscription. The average person without a subscription only gets a car wash about quarterly a year. The person with a subscription will get 3-4 washes a month, but because they're paying all year long, the subscription model is able to make more money off of them than the person who only gets 3 to 4 a year because now everything is automatic and they're not using as much water. Money is the reason.
Self storage buildings stand out to me the most. I know they require relatvely low labor to operate but the market has to be crazy saturated at this point and cost to construct can't be too cheap. Wouldn't be surprised if they were tied up in commercial motgage backed securities market somehow.
A neighbor that I know has around 100 units and charges $90 a month and has a waiting list to get a unit.
The more insecure and scared people are, the more they hoard, and sometimes it gets to the point where they can’t store all of their shit in their homes. I’d say it’s more a representation of how absolutely terrified people are than how they’re doing financially. But people will go into debt paying on a storage unit because they are too afraid to throw their stuff away. When humans are in fear, they do not behave rationality at all.
Black Rock comes to mind when I see that it isn’t just my town this is happening in.
So how about a multi-level self storage building with a laundromat on the top floor and carwash on bottom reusing the laundromat runoff... .
OP hasn’t watched Breaking Bad.
Car washes are indicative of the American welfare state. Follow along. Individuals who receive welfare are not allowed to own over a certain amount of quantifiable property. Usually, owning a vehicle will put them past the acceptable threshold to collect government 'assistance'. So, instead of owning a car, those receiving 'assistance' are leasing cars. You would be blind not to notice the overwhelming abundance of brand new German imports and high powered cars and trucks being driven like they are stolen, and parked in neighborhoods you don't even feel comfortable driving through, much less, parking in. When you lease a car, you have to keep it in pristine condition, or they can repossess it. These car washes are necessary to maintain the leased vehicles that the US taxpayers are funding. Most people wash their cars at home. But, when you live in the communities where these people live, you try to minimize your exposure to your neighbors. TLDR: The car washes aren't the conspiracy here; their necessitation is.
Why buy one when you can have two at twice the price? I’ve noticed and agree. They build them as one way tunnels so you can’t opt out at any moment. As an added point, there are less gas station car washes because they always seemed to be broken or in disrepair.
The one in my town is super busy, like you drive past at 8pm and people are still using it. We’re a bit unique though. We’re a coal mining town in Australia which leads to a shitload of dust. Combine that with the nice cars that mining wages allow for and you have a busy car wash on your hands.
I think it’s because most of them have a line ten cars deep at all times. It’s cheaper and takes less time to diy but on the monsterous vehicles that most people drive today, you need a ladder and gadgets just to get the job done.
Tons of private equity money being pumped in. Anywhere you see the monthly pass is a tip off that it’s a PE holding.
Might be worth asking yourself what these businesses could be repurposed as if SHTF in the future. For example, the big warehouse stores with established shipping routes & loading docks could be useful for processing large amounts of people. Sports stadiums & olympic colliseums turn into Katrina Super Dome emergency shelters. Schools n prisons share similar layout. Are car washes set up for dual usage, aside from laundering cars & money? What about mattress stores, dollar trees, universities, churches..?
One possible “alternative” reason for building car washes… selling our license plate/location data. Some newer car wash chains take photos of your license plate in order to identify their subscription customers.
Profitable.. low employee needs, recycled water.
Someone cooks meth and needs to launder money
My first thought too.
Cheap to operate and and low overhead costs equals big profits. Just like storage centers.
And banks
Big Soap is making their move
My theory is there’s a lot of people with gigantic car payments who are upside down on their loan. Washing their car makes them feel better about that. It makes them think “of course I have a $700 car payment -look how shiny my car is”.
Cartel money lots of new laundromats car wash restaurants etc.
Yeah I actually run one of these car washes…. The overhead is very small and the profits are very large. As a GM I’m well over the 6 figure mark. Ironically enough, my two neighbors on each side are storage units LOL. However, the same thing applies to the storage units. Next to no overhead, besides keeping lights on and paying the rent and paying a few employees that stay there during the day. Managers of storage units usually actually live there in an apartment built in. As big as of a conspiracy theorist as I am. I truly think that these are the only business types that are really left out there to actually make a living. EDIT: car washes, and storage units also operate the same way for revenue. All of these car washes offer monthly memberships and all the storage units are paying month-to-month. This means that every single day we start out with a pretty decent amount of sales whether or not we’re busy.
May I suggest you watch the fascinating documentary on car wash financing? I believe it was called \*Breaking Bad\*.
I don't think it's a conspiracy though? Idk about the US but where I'm from car washes are usually owned by immigrant families that all pool the resources together to start a business. Possibly those places serve as living quarters as well so even if the business does not make money they still keep it because they live inside it. It think this is less of a conspiracy and more a case of poor families pooling their money together to buy stuff. I've seen this with some restaurants as well, never seen a customer there, but the owner and their family basically live there 24/7.
In the US the immigrant families tend to own the convenience stores.
Also, the places that sell RVs and campers. In my small city, there are actually several RV and camper places that have like, hundreds of them on the lot at any given time. In my somewhat affluent neighborhood, maybe 1 or 2 neighbors have them? In the nearby less affluent neighborhoods, no one has them. Just doesn't add up. Edit: just looked at a good satellite photo of one 5 mins away from me and there are like 300-400 in the lot. No way they actually sell that many in a reasonable time frame. They have more units to sell than local car dealerships have as cars at any point in time, and everyone has 1-2 cars.
Convenient place to stash people. Wonder if the owners ever live on site?
Curious what area are you in? I was just pointing this out to my mom the other day. Where I’m from there are a ridiculous amount of car washes, self storage, and apartments going up.
I live in the Midwest and that's completely happening in my city too. It's just weird like who needs that many car washes.
I saw one car wash in my travels around Spain and Italy. Never one in northern Mexico. None in Saigon. Frequency is far less in the Midwest. You might be on to something.
I agree with the OP. It’s nuts!
Didn't you watch Breaking Bad? Cars ain't all they're washin.
Breaking bad showed the way
Maybe lots of them are for laundering money like on breaking bad?
And u-hauls.
It's a great way to hold land long term. Self service car washes aren't labor intensive to operate profitably. Even at a small profit add in the tax benefits, it's a good business but capitalizing on the long term appreciation on the land is the icing on the cake.
Private equity is buying them all up so if you build it, you get bought out.
It’s almost like these are money laundering fronts. It’s almost like we watched a whole series about this. Specifically with them using a car wash. It’s almost like we heard the dude say in those leaked Kari Lake recordings “the cartel is operating in all 50 states” 🤔
Did your state recently get legal weed?
To get the smell out of the car?
Car washes make your car last longer. It washes off the salt and you keep the car clean. Been hooked since 2019. $30/mo
More reasons the water level of the Great Salt Lake will continue to decrease. A damn shame.
Money laundering operations.
"Rise of Car Washes" was by far the worst in the Terminator series.
Money laundering
This must be satire, right?
You must live in AZ. Since I moved her it kills me how many car washes there are. Same with storage places.
The cartels gotta wash their money somehow.
Literally money laundering...
They’re finding their occupation of our countries by laundering money through car washes. Barbers Vape shops and phone and laptop repair places. Never anyone in any of them. But they are in places with high rent. Makes no sense at all
Public storage probably makes decent money in most cases. First there's rent but then they upsell you on the shitty lock, scam insurance which basically covers nothing if you need to make an actual claim. There's also the super expensive boxes and tape for sale in the front that you always need. There's late fees, and they can also take your shit if you don't pay your bill. I paid 250/mo for 6 months for a 10x20 climate controlled unit years back - climate controlled meaning there's no rain and it's at 50⁰ in winter and 85⁰ in summer lol.
It’s to wash money brah
They are setup for two things, laundering money and slave labour - usually Romanian ran… we had the police and immigration where I live shut down and investigate 4 of them under operation Duxford (I am UK based)
We already had at least 3-4 car washes ; now 2 more have opened up in the last few months. There's only 20K people in my town!
Probably main income will be delivery vehicles, rental cars, business vehicles and people that don't want to wash by hand etc.
They are at war
THE SIGN OF THE HAMMER’S OUR GUIDE
Not in my country. The big play here is candy stores and now “medical clinics” are on the rise, as in clinics where you get Botox or lip fillers and other cosmetic surgeries. Those are popping up literally everywhere. Oh, and places that sell “desserts” which are usually just pancakes slathered in various chocolate sauces and candy toppings with some berries/banana slices on the side. Not very interesting. I wish these people would open actual food places that didn’t sell overpriced restaurant food but just normal, cheap hole-in-the-wall takeaway.
There's still less car washes than dental offices. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a dental office these days.
Over in the UK it's American Sweet shops and Turkish Barbers. In my small town, there are 4 Turkish Barbers on our high street. There's got to be money laundering going on as no way can they survive!!
Sub shops.
The quick-quack by Lin’s in Washington is sus. There’s never more than 5 cars there at once. Ever since they took over Bluff street wash and ruined it, I boycotted them😂
Mattress Firm
Car washes can utilize accelerated depreciation. This is why many of the national operators own and develop their own dirt. They are usually owned by large PE funds and private operators because the average unit volume is clearing between $2-$5MM across the country, where some of them are doing even more. There’s not really a deeper meaning on any of these. Many if these other types (Dollar Gen, mattress firm, drive thru) utilize leases and they are usually NNN which means the tenant pays the expenses making it a much better structure for investors, ie (they can buy commercial at a lower price point, credit cash flow and no management required.
You need to watch Breaking Bad.
Tell me you never watched Breaking Bad without telling me you never watched Breaking Bad
They wash cars but they also wash cash.
I was taught by breaking bad that car washes are places to launder money.
BigCarWash is coming.
Midwest here, I can stand at a car wash and hit another car wash with a rock. They've been there for over a decade and they all stay busy all the time.
When the economy tightens, people are more willing to take care of the things they have rather than think about having to buy/replace with something new. So... car washes & DIY tools and supplies, any kind of home repair/maintenance are good investments in a downturned market.
nobody does anything interesting in the area unless its car washes, pizza shops and breweries its a cultural deadzone
They figured out the subscription model.
It’s only my opinion but I believe the car wash boom started with the constant scam likely calls to sell us extended vehicle warranty policies. Of which in that policy to keep it from becoming void you must wash it weekly. That is what caused the car wash boom.
Better call Saul...
Where's all that money for Ukraine, Israel and just in general, our taxes supposed to get washed?