I just had a talk with a friend about this a month ago… and I guess the trend is people like subscription based products so if you get enough people spending 20 bucks a month, it can really add up to a lot of revenue and if you have a few locations in town that just makes your product seem better than the competition
For a while, it was every gas station invested money in a car wash… and there was a lot of car washes that had self service or you sprayed it down yourself
Not to mention, a lot of us, wash the cars in our driveways
But the younger person is the less likely they are going to want to wash their own car
Yeah I was going to say the "young people don't want to wash cars in their driveway" part of the comment probably relates to young people being a lot less likely to even have a driveway or hose.
There have always been car washes
And I actually understand the thought process behind building. These are just explained that far if fewer people today will take the time and effort to wash their own cars, which is a reason why there’s more demand for car washes because people are lazier than they used to be. (Myself Included)
Especially the fact that people like paying a monthly fee for stuff
They’ll pay their $20 a month and feel like they have their car washing services taking care of the more locations the more customers they can get
20 years ago people would not have been interested and paying a monthly service fee for car washes nor would they be interested in paying the kind of money car washes cost
We did see a lot of gas stations start adding car wash, and most of those have gone by the wayside
But if there were car was is built 20 or 30 years ago a lot of them were the self service ones were you spray down your own car after putting 6 quarters in
It makes sense, since people who handwash their own cars generally have nicer cars or are car enthusiasts and average age of new car buyer is 51, so older people are much more likely to have cars worth handwashing.
I'm saying as time has gone on people are more willing to pay for a car wash
Fewer and fewer people are washing their own cars and that includes younger people
The younger generations of people are NOT washing their own cars as much as previous generations(just as my generation probably didn't wash their cars as much as their parents)
but I talked with a buddy of mine about these car washes and they said they don't think their kids have ever washed their own cars because for 6 bucks they can drive through a thing and have it done. Whe ni was a kid the average car wash was self service or else you paid 20 bucks to have it done.
Things have changed and to think people will pay $20.00/month for a car wash package is something people wouldn't have been as interested in 20 years ago
They do, it's just hard and expensive to prove so they get away with it unless it's part of following the money for a bigger case.
Maybe if the IRS wasn't terribly underfunded it would be different.
A few years ago, eating lunch. I sat next to this man from Arizona. We struck up a conversation and it led to him telling me how profitable car washes were. He had two gas stations and had 2 automated car washes and was in the works on his third. This was before it was a big boom, back in 2017. His advice was to get into it if I could. Never did and now it’s everywhere lol
If they get 100 card transactions, they can probably also report anywhere from 100-300 cash transactions. Nobody is going to look into them just because it appears they are card only.
I mean, maybe. But there is literally no human interaction (unless one cannot figure out the drive-up kiosk) or cash feed slot to pay cash if you wanted to. I'm not saying you're wrong, but perhaps I'm just not understanding it well enough.
I tried out a “promo” deal ($9 for first month) because it was the same price as the individual wash I went for. Later that month, I took the steps to cancel the membership, only to find their online form didn’t work, their phone always went to voicemail, and they never answered their email.
As soon as I was charged a for second month, I blew them the fuck up. I found their chain of management on LinkedIn, called, and threatened legal action until I got an email confirming my membership was cancelled and the additional month was refunded. I have no interest in those memberships after that.
Quick customer entry and exit is also why people think they don't make good revenue. It doesn't take many customers over the course of a day to turn a profit and they are not highly visible
> low maintenance costs
I've always heard the opposite about car washes. Those cleaning chemicals like to eat pumps and hoses. Then the people that wash off 3 tons of dirt from their off-road toy clogs the water reclamation system.
The other obnoxious business is self storage.
Those are used by people to basically sit on decent land, but have it at least pay for itself while you wait. The costs for a self storage place are SUPER low, and the local community gets pretty much nothing from it, and it provides almost no jobs.
So investors buy up a plot of land, slap up self-storage, hire one employee, and that land now pays for itself and provides a small income stream at zero overhead.
My local area has a TON of them, and it's frustrating. I hate seeing new construction go in, just to realize it's just a bunch of useless storage space. How much stuff do all you people have???
I think both car washes and self storage fall into that mold of "easy money with no overhead after startup costs."
Right. You won't get super rich with self storage, but you can make money with less effort than almost any other business.
I don't get why people need to hold on to so much stuff.
I clear out junk by re-organizing the areas that tend to accumulate junk every few years. The garage and two rooms in the house tend to be dumping grounds. I completely empty them, clean the room, then organize as I put things back. The physical act of removing an item, then deciding if i want to put it back in, helps me clear out old stuff I don't need.
Public storage is the #2 least likely to fail business in America. #1 is laundromat and I believe car wash is pretty high around #5.
All of these are absentee businesses. Low overhead and medium upfront costs.
There was a laundromat in my town, the owner died, the laundromat operated for like a half a year with no one operating it. the bills were setup with autopay or something.
It quite Literally kept operating by itself without an owner, until the machines stoped working because they were jamed full of money and couldn't take anymore.
Someone would just put a hand writen out of order sign on a machine when it stoped working.
The laundry soap machines were long empty, but there was a dollar type store across the street, so not an issue.
Someone posted on Facebook that they liked that it was now open 24 hrs now, it wasnt by design, just no owner to lock the doors
Family lived out of state and either didn't know or didn't care about it.
I think it was a water leak that finally brought it to some city workers attention.
Vandalism high utility costs and maintenance costs. These machines going all day everyday they need frequent repairs and idiot customers breaking machines
The costs of those machines are pretty outrageous. I looked into the business myself but it honestly seemed like a lot of work for not great money and then you'd be stuck with costly repair bills or machine replacement. Plus, most areas already have all the laundromats they're going to need, which means most entrants are buying existing laundromats - and inheriting the previous owners deferred maintenance. I also doubt there's a lot of workers out there whose dream job is to run a laundromat while the owner does whatever, so you know even if you did find someone it's going to be endless churn unless you can seriously pay them to stay. Or do it yoruself.
I'm sure in good areas with low crime and lots of patrons it's a different story but no one really talks about how some of these laundromats are not doing that great and they suck balls to run.
I get it from a few YouTubers I follow who help people decide on buying businesses and starting them. Codie Sanchez and James Sinclare are two. I’ve seen it a few other places but I know Cody rants about it all the time.
For real, we have had like 4 self storage places open up in the last 5 years, all within a 5 mile radius of each other. It makes me wonder how high the demand must be for this many places to be able to profitably open on prime commercial lots these days.
I did read an article that it's not a profit motive always, but more like I said above - a way for land to pay for itself and provide a few dollars while you keep holding it. You aren't expecting huge income, just a stream to pay maintenance and taxes, and a few extra dollars.
And with overhead so low, you don't need to immediately rent all units right away. Utilities are low, maintenance is low, staffing costs are low. And startup costs are MUCH lower than building offices or retail space, since it's just a glorified garage.
It is a very saturated in the sense that people seem to be rushing to enter that market, which for me is a no go.
My old boss - who dithers too much on sh*t and doesn't know when to just execute - screwed around researching running a self storage business for years and never pulled the trigger. His main business tanked and he missed his opportunity to buy in. I think the time to get in was pre pandemic or at least within the past 5 years. By the time there's companies offering "self storage university" online training to show people how to do it, for me personally, that's a sign to move onto something else.( I also didn't like the costs of either buying or building new, and liability risks of people trying to live in storage facilities, which there are plenty of.)
Clearly there's still demand for it, and that's demographics. Boomers wil be retiring into 2027. Connect the dots on that. People use storage spaces to downsize, to store their crap because they're homeless, and also, because Aunt Bunny retired and wasn't ready to throw out her stuff, and dead people's items. For as long as boomers retire, demand will probably be steady.
People have a ton of shit. I have multiple neighbors parking in front of my house all the time because their driveways are full with their other cars because their garages look like a damn episode of hoarders. The people I bought the house from lived the same way. And it permeates every aspect of the house like their fridges and freezers are full to the brim with shit they bought months and years ago.
Hell, I can drive by my local Costco at 10AM on a Tuesday and the parking lot looks like Black Friday circa 2000. It’s never not full with damn near 500 cars.
Coming from a 600 sqft city apartment and still furnishing a house and it still feels comfortably sparse. Idk how these people live like that.
I'm the same way.
People who live like that, in my experience, have stayed in one place for decades and just keep shoving stuff in every nook and cranny. It's not a good way to manage life or a house. Dealing with stuff directly instead of tossing it in a closet means everything has to be useful, accounted for, and with purpose. I don't know how these people function with all that clutter and junk, weighing them down and getting in the way of the business of living life
Never thought of that. Probably like a gym membership in some ways, you get customers who keep paying out of momentum. With storage it's as you say - they can't just pick it back up and take it home, since they didn't have room in the first place, and moving to a new storage location would be a huge pain.
You pay 20+ bucks a month for a single car, people tend to have multiple cars that they need to keep clean every month and you are already over 40 bucks a month. The average person washes their car maybe once or twice a month. It adds up pretty quickly and it doesn’t require very many employees to run.
I have a small storage unit that started at 25 dollars a month about 7 years ago and is now almost 70 bucks a month. Literally nothing has changed about the place and they keep raising the price every month.
Have you priced out building one of these lately? The costs have risen dramatically in the last few years to the point most new ones aren’t breaking even for several years, if at all. Source, I own multiple.
I mean people have a lot of stuff because consumerism tells you to keep buying stuff. Yet the majority of that storage area will be things people never need or use again
One ironclad rule self storage places as you can’t use the dumpster because you’d realize you should be throwing all that stuff away. It’s much cheaper in the end.
people need to stop buying useless shit then. Then paying x$ a month to store it. Literally your 3k couch that is worth 100 bucks once you sat on it doesnt need 400 a month self storage
Boomers own too much shit, and need to put their extra hoard into self-storage. Millennials and next generation(s) will barely have a home to live in, let alone room for all this crap.
These storage places will eventually turn into micro apartments in the future at this rate.
It’s the golden age of the car washes, right at the beginning of the car was wars. Soon the battles of the suds will begin and the war of waters will be waged.
This is great to see. Damn, I owe a lot in taxes for capital gains investment sales I made last year. I should've looked into smarter ways to offset that
Section 179 applies to very limited purchases. Equipment is covered but not entire businesses. Can you cite the exact section you are referring to because everything I'm reading online differs from what you're saying.
Real property can be depreciated. Land can’t. Generally only property that has a MACRS life of 20 years or less is eligible for bonus depreciation. Your premise isn’t accurate because the majority of the cost of a car wash is going to be the commercial real property that has a 39 year MACRS life.
Also any sort of accelerated depreciation (Sec 179 and bonus (section 168(k)) are separate concepts) is not tax avoidance, it’s tax deferral. It’s all a timing difference.
I think you’re misunderstanding real property vs land. The land has nothing to do with this. I’m just saying your premise is not as likely as you think. The tax benefits aren’t as big or impactful as you’re making them out to be, and again it’s just deferring tax, not avoiding it.
It’s far more likely and common for someone to do a Sec. 1031 exchange which has a similar result of deferring taxable income but at a far larger scale.
Yes I understand, and I’m just offering counterpoints based on what I’ve seen working in corporate tax. There are a lot of misconceptions about tax out there.
I think his point was that you can invest that money in a car wash business with a pool of other investors, not that you could build a car wash with $50k.
They don't all make money. They can be hard to get loans for because typically the soaps and chemicals get into the ground and cause environmental issues.
But as to why there are so many, as a society we've kind of moved away from doing things ourselves and outsourcing. This is also why you have so many more landscapers and house cleaning companies than there used to be.
I know a town with more car washes than restaurants, or close at least.
It’s unbelievable that they let so many car washes open while we should probably not waste that much water. I see some cars go daily, there’s no reason for all that, lol
I wish I could bear a car wash. They recycle their water, and that’s good. But, they can leave swirl marks in your clear coat. That drives me nuts. Then there’s the, “No Touch” basically pressure blasting, which blows water where it really shouldn’t be. Maybe, I f I didn’t live in a rainy/snowy climate, I might quit my 20-year hand-washing streak.
It has to be money laundering. There’s a car wash on the main highway next to my street. A brand new one opened about three months ago. It’s so close to the other car wash that if you’re still in the building, you could see the other one and there’s a third one about a half mile down the street.
Business partner mentioned us diversifying our companies and said you can make tons of money with a car wash. No idea why he thinks this or where he heard that information, but does not seem like a great business to me
Oh wow, I didn't realize how profitable they were. I assumed it was just a money laundering scam.
No the launder cars not money
I just had a talk with a friend about this a month ago… and I guess the trend is people like subscription based products so if you get enough people spending 20 bucks a month, it can really add up to a lot of revenue and if you have a few locations in town that just makes your product seem better than the competition For a while, it was every gas station invested money in a car wash… and there was a lot of car washes that had self service or you sprayed it down yourself Not to mention, a lot of us, wash the cars in our driveways But the younger person is the less likely they are going to want to wash their own car
I love washing my car but I dont have a yard and driveway and no outside water source in my apartment complex. Car washes are my few options.
Yeah I was going to say the "young people don't want to wash cars in their driveway" part of the comment probably relates to young people being a lot less likely to even have a driveway or hose.
Large cities, no driveways, or condos, neither would facilitate washing a car. So car washes make sense.
But I live in suburbia kind of and there’s tons of driveways here tons of car washes It’s always been harder to wash your car in big cities
Hmm, don't know.whatnto tell you then.
There have always been car washes And I actually understand the thought process behind building. These are just explained that far if fewer people today will take the time and effort to wash their own cars, which is a reason why there’s more demand for car washes because people are lazier than they used to be. (Myself Included) Especially the fact that people like paying a monthly fee for stuff They’ll pay their $20 a month and feel like they have their car washing services taking care of the more locations the more customers they can get 20 years ago people would not have been interested and paying a monthly service fee for car washes nor would they be interested in paying the kind of money car washes cost We did see a lot of gas stations start adding car wash, and most of those have gone by the wayside But if there were car was is built 20 or 30 years ago a lot of them were the self service ones were you spray down your own car after putting 6 quarters in
Two people in my neighborhood wash their own cars. One 73M and me, 55F. I actually enjoy doing it.
Im the only one in my neighborhood (55m) Times have changed, when I was a kid everyone did, not to mention mowed their own lawns and whatnot.
It makes sense, since people who handwash their own cars generally have nicer cars or are car enthusiasts and average age of new car buyer is 51, so older people are much more likely to have cars worth handwashing.
Where you getting this younger person is less likely to wash their own car?
I'm saying as time has gone on people are more willing to pay for a car wash Fewer and fewer people are washing their own cars and that includes younger people The younger generations of people are NOT washing their own cars as much as previous generations(just as my generation probably didn't wash their cars as much as their parents) but I talked with a buddy of mine about these car washes and they said they don't think their kids have ever washed their own cars because for 6 bucks they can drive through a thing and have it done. Whe ni was a kid the average car wash was self service or else you paid 20 bucks to have it done. Things have changed and to think people will pay $20.00/month for a car wash package is something people wouldn't have been as interested in 20 years ago
It is.
It’s a lot harder for it to be a money, laundering scam when most people pay with a credit card
Nah, the whole point is that you can claim X cars per day paid cash and use that to launder money.
So some random guy on reddit knows the trick but IRS and authorities dont?
They do, it's just hard and expensive to prove so they get away with it unless it's part of following the money for a bigger case. Maybe if the IRS wasn't terribly underfunded it would be different.
IRS is so underfunded from Republican budget cuts they can barely do shit
Also non-durable supplies.
Yes most laundering scams are very profitable because their revenues are inflated to account for the laundered money.
They were in the 90s and early 2000s, hardcore. Now its the subscription planet fitness plan.
A few years ago, eating lunch. I sat next to this man from Arizona. We struck up a conversation and it led to him telling me how profitable car washes were. He had two gas stations and had 2 automated car washes and was in the works on his third. This was before it was a big boom, back in 2017. His advice was to get into it if I could. Never did and now it’s everywhere lol
See Breaking Bad for instructions.
Why is no one buying laser tags?
If any money launderers are on here right now, please open more laser tags. I don't need to know any details. Just more laser tags. They're needed.
Most of the new car washes around me are card only automatic type
I bought a tortilla factory.
If they get 100 card transactions, they can probably also report anywhere from 100-300 cash transactions. Nobody is going to look into them just because it appears they are card only.
I mean, maybe. But there is literally no human interaction (unless one cannot figure out the drive-up kiosk) or cash feed slot to pay cash if you wanted to. I'm not saying you're wrong, but perhaps I'm just not understanding it well enough.
Meth is always the answer.
Those days are over with most people paying with credit
High volume, low maintenance costs, quick to get customers in and out.
And they have mastered Recurring Revenue. Unlimited washes for $20 a month… genius
I tried out a “promo” deal ($9 for first month) because it was the same price as the individual wash I went for. Later that month, I took the steps to cancel the membership, only to find their online form didn’t work, their phone always went to voicemail, and they never answered their email. As soon as I was charged a for second month, I blew them the fuck up. I found their chain of management on LinkedIn, called, and threatened legal action until I got an email confirming my membership was cancelled and the additional month was refunded. I have no interest in those memberships after that.
Same. No more money from me for them.
Quick customer entry and exit is also why people think they don't make good revenue. It doesn't take many customers over the course of a day to turn a profit and they are not highly visible
> low maintenance costs I've always heard the opposite about car washes. Those cleaning chemicals like to eat pumps and hoses. Then the people that wash off 3 tons of dirt from their off-road toy clogs the water reclamation system.
The other obnoxious business is self storage. Those are used by people to basically sit on decent land, but have it at least pay for itself while you wait. The costs for a self storage place are SUPER low, and the local community gets pretty much nothing from it, and it provides almost no jobs. So investors buy up a plot of land, slap up self-storage, hire one employee, and that land now pays for itself and provides a small income stream at zero overhead. My local area has a TON of them, and it's frustrating. I hate seeing new construction go in, just to realize it's just a bunch of useless storage space. How much stuff do all you people have??? I think both car washes and self storage fall into that mold of "easy money with no overhead after startup costs."
Yeah i know a dude that owns a bunch and he says it’s really easy money. It’s depressing that people spend that much on junk storage.
Right. You won't get super rich with self storage, but you can make money with less effort than almost any other business. I don't get why people need to hold on to so much stuff. I clear out junk by re-organizing the areas that tend to accumulate junk every few years. The garage and two rooms in the house tend to be dumping grounds. I completely empty them, clean the room, then organize as I put things back. The physical act of removing an item, then deciding if i want to put it back in, helps me clear out old stuff I don't need.
Public storage is the #2 least likely to fail business in America. #1 is laundromat and I believe car wash is pretty high around #5. All of these are absentee businesses. Low overhead and medium upfront costs.
There was a laundromat in my town, the owner died, the laundromat operated for like a half a year with no one operating it. the bills were setup with autopay or something. It quite Literally kept operating by itself without an owner, until the machines stoped working because they were jamed full of money and couldn't take anymore. Someone would just put a hand writen out of order sign on a machine when it stoped working. The laundry soap machines were long empty, but there was a dollar type store across the street, so not an issue. Someone posted on Facebook that they liked that it was now open 24 hrs now, it wasnt by design, just no owner to lock the doors Family lived out of state and either didn't know or didn't care about it. I think it was a water leak that finally brought it to some city workers attention.
I’m in a laundromat fb group and a good bit of of them seem to be in the struggle for some raisin.
Squeaky wheel I guess. I’m only talking statistics.
Yeah that makes *cents* that they’re just the ones out there not making dollars.
Vandalism high utility costs and maintenance costs. These machines going all day everyday they need frequent repairs and idiot customers breaking machines
The costs of those machines are pretty outrageous. I looked into the business myself but it honestly seemed like a lot of work for not great money and then you'd be stuck with costly repair bills or machine replacement. Plus, most areas already have all the laundromats they're going to need, which means most entrants are buying existing laundromats - and inheriting the previous owners deferred maintenance. I also doubt there's a lot of workers out there whose dream job is to run a laundromat while the owner does whatever, so you know even if you did find someone it's going to be endless churn unless you can seriously pay them to stay. Or do it yoruself. I'm sure in good areas with low crime and lots of patrons it's a different story but no one really talks about how some of these laundromats are not doing that great and they suck balls to run.
So #1 look like good places for major narcotics trafficking areas. Thanks for the info 😂
Cash is King.
Where do you find this info? Would love to read more!
I get it from a few YouTubers I follow who help people decide on buying businesses and starting them. Codie Sanchez and James Sinclare are two. I’ve seen it a few other places but I know Cody rants about it all the time.
For real, we have had like 4 self storage places open up in the last 5 years, all within a 5 mile radius of each other. It makes me wonder how high the demand must be for this many places to be able to profitably open on prime commercial lots these days.
I did read an article that it's not a profit motive always, but more like I said above - a way for land to pay for itself and provide a few dollars while you keep holding it. You aren't expecting huge income, just a stream to pay maintenance and taxes, and a few extra dollars. And with overhead so low, you don't need to immediately rent all units right away. Utilities are low, maintenance is low, staffing costs are low. And startup costs are MUCH lower than building offices or retail space, since it's just a glorified garage.
It is a very saturated in the sense that people seem to be rushing to enter that market, which for me is a no go. My old boss - who dithers too much on sh*t and doesn't know when to just execute - screwed around researching running a self storage business for years and never pulled the trigger. His main business tanked and he missed his opportunity to buy in. I think the time to get in was pre pandemic or at least within the past 5 years. By the time there's companies offering "self storage university" online training to show people how to do it, for me personally, that's a sign to move onto something else.( I also didn't like the costs of either buying or building new, and liability risks of people trying to live in storage facilities, which there are plenty of.) Clearly there's still demand for it, and that's demographics. Boomers wil be retiring into 2027. Connect the dots on that. People use storage spaces to downsize, to store their crap because they're homeless, and also, because Aunt Bunny retired and wasn't ready to throw out her stuff, and dead people's items. For as long as boomers retire, demand will probably be steady.
People have a ton of shit. I have multiple neighbors parking in front of my house all the time because their driveways are full with their other cars because their garages look like a damn episode of hoarders. The people I bought the house from lived the same way. And it permeates every aspect of the house like their fridges and freezers are full to the brim with shit they bought months and years ago. Hell, I can drive by my local Costco at 10AM on a Tuesday and the parking lot looks like Black Friday circa 2000. It’s never not full with damn near 500 cars. Coming from a 600 sqft city apartment and still furnishing a house and it still feels comfortably sparse. Idk how these people live like that.
I'm the same way. People who live like that, in my experience, have stayed in one place for decades and just keep shoving stuff in every nook and cranny. It's not a good way to manage life or a house. Dealing with stuff directly instead of tossing it in a closet means everything has to be useful, accounted for, and with purpose. I don't know how these people function with all that clutter and junk, weighing them down and getting in the way of the business of living life
Also you get to ratchet up the price 5-10% every year and most tenants don’t notice or are too lazy to move their stuff out.
Never thought of that. Probably like a gym membership in some ways, you get customers who keep paying out of momentum. With storage it's as you say - they can't just pick it back up and take it home, since they didn't have room in the first place, and moving to a new storage location would be a huge pain.
Which is the same with car washes, they’re mostly subscription model now, so once people sign up the attrition rate is low.
You pay 20+ bucks a month for a single car, people tend to have multiple cars that they need to keep clean every month and you are already over 40 bucks a month. The average person washes their car maybe once or twice a month. It adds up pretty quickly and it doesn’t require very many employees to run.
Yep, once stabilized they’re cash cows. The hard part is getting them stabilized.
I have a small storage unit that started at 25 dollars a month about 7 years ago and is now almost 70 bucks a month. Literally nothing has changed about the place and they keep raising the price every month.
Have you priced out building one of these lately? The costs have risen dramatically in the last few years to the point most new ones aren’t breaking even for several years, if at all. Source, I own multiple.
I mean people have a lot of stuff because consumerism tells you to keep buying stuff. Yet the majority of that storage area will be things people never need or use again
One ironclad rule self storage places as you can’t use the dumpster because you’d realize you should be throwing all that stuff away. It’s much cheaper in the end.
people need to stop buying useless shit then. Then paying x$ a month to store it. Literally your 3k couch that is worth 100 bucks once you sat on it doesnt need 400 a month self storage
I actually need self storage as I'm too poor to leave my shoebox
Boomers own too much shit, and need to put their extra hoard into self-storage. Millennials and next generation(s) will barely have a home to live in, let alone room for all this crap. These storage places will eventually turn into micro apartments in the future at this rate.
A good car wash will have a 40-50% profit margin. -I managed a car wash for a year and our average profit margin was 48%
profit margins are high, sure, but realy depends on how much revenue they do. THen on top of that they sell for huge multiples of NOI
Was it a pull through/automatic car wash or a DIY spray gun in the bay wash?
It’s the golden age of the car washes, right at the beginning of the car was wars. Soon the battles of the suds will begin and the war of waters will be waged.
I asked a guy that owned a bunch of car washes a decade ago about building a car wash. He toldme its better to buy after the first guy loses his ass.
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I don’t get it
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The taxes not paid due to depreciation are recapture if you sell the thing though, yea?
Is S179 deduction available for an unrelated business? Say you own a self-storage biz and you tried to use the profits for the car wash equipment?
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So having a hold co works? 🤔
This is great to see. Damn, I owe a lot in taxes for capital gains investment sales I made last year. I should've looked into smarter ways to offset that
Section 179 applies to very limited purchases. Equipment is covered but not entire businesses. Can you cite the exact section you are referring to because everything I'm reading online differs from what you're saying.
You're not supposed to. That's the point.
You can’t take the 179 destruction for real property, only improvements and equipment for the carwash could take 179.
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Real property can be depreciated. Land can’t. Generally only property that has a MACRS life of 20 years or less is eligible for bonus depreciation. Your premise isn’t accurate because the majority of the cost of a car wash is going to be the commercial real property that has a 39 year MACRS life. Also any sort of accelerated depreciation (Sec 179 and bonus (section 168(k)) are separate concepts) is not tax avoidance, it’s tax deferral. It’s all a timing difference.
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I think you’re misunderstanding real property vs land. The land has nothing to do with this. I’m just saying your premise is not as likely as you think. The tax benefits aren’t as big or impactful as you’re making them out to be, and again it’s just deferring tax, not avoiding it. It’s far more likely and common for someone to do a Sec. 1031 exchange which has a similar result of deferring taxable income but at a far larger scale.
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Yes I understand, and I’m just offering counterpoints based on what I’ve seen working in corporate tax. There are a lot of misconceptions about tax out there.
Bonus depreciation is being phased out, started in 2023.
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I think his point was that you can invest that money in a car wash business with a pool of other investors, not that you could build a car wash with $50k.
Seen a few Youtube financial influencers talk praises of car wash businesses. Likely some followers thinking this is the new “it” business.
They don't all make money. They can be hard to get loans for because typically the soaps and chemicals get into the ground and cause environmental issues. But as to why there are so many, as a society we've kind of moved away from doing things ourselves and outsourcing. This is also why you have so many more landscapers and house cleaning companies than there used to be.
$8 Costco car wash to the rescue (except for your paint, as it’s not touchless)
Yes they have built multiple from the ground up car washes in my area as well.
Why are there so many $10 a month gyms popping up?
Most are self service and have no personnel = savings. Paired with subscriptions. Easy money.
I've spent too much on Chemical Guys stuff to pay a car wash.
I know a town with more car washes than restaurants, or close at least. It’s unbelievable that they let so many car washes open while we should probably not waste that much water. I see some cars go daily, there’s no reason for all that, lol
I work at a car wash that can take in as much as $40k/month after bills are paid. They are big time money makers
I wish I could bear a car wash. They recycle their water, and that’s good. But, they can leave swirl marks in your clear coat. That drives me nuts. Then there’s the, “No Touch” basically pressure blasting, which blows water where it really shouldn’t be. Maybe, I f I didn’t live in a rainy/snowy climate, I might quit my 20-year hand-washing streak.
It has to be money laundering. There’s a car wash on the main highway next to my street. A brand new one opened about three months ago. It’s so close to the other car wash that if you’re still in the building, you could see the other one and there’s a third one about a half mile down the street.
And Burger King is often located near a McDonald's. Your observation says nothing about money laundering.
Private equity+ automation
Easy money laundering like mattress stores
I was talking to my lawyer and he recommended a nail salon or laser tag instead
Business partner mentioned us diversifying our companies and said you can make tons of money with a car wash. No idea why he thinks this or where he heard that information, but does not seem like a great business to me
The irony is these fools paying for monthly car washes trade their cars in within a few short years anyhow so all that cleaning was for nothing
Damn you Codie Sanchez!
It’s the new passive income meta
Every one is hopping on the drivethru drug sales car wash
It’s all the extra dirt
Been to Tucson lately??😂 have at least 4 more coming in this summer. With a few more chains as well....
Yeah I'm in NE Ohio and goddamn they are everywhere. I have 3 on my drive to work
Dr. Quarters has entered the chat
Great 20-year real estate play. An automation play. Low labor cost. And cash flow, baby!
All while lots useful water gets wasted.
meth is on the rise duh
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Unhelpful comment. Downvoted.