What a great question. Deciding on which level of service for your car wash is an important starting point for any potential car wash business owner. And there are some important considerations for each one.

Get this decision right and everything downstream gets easier: the site you look for, the capital you raise, the staff you hire. Get it wrong and you spend a decade running the wrong business on the wrong corner.

Express: limited space, high traffic

If you do an express car wash, this may be good for a location that has limited space. This is also an excellent opportunity to use a pull through system that allows customers to park, run the car through, and then move on with their lives.

This type of location requires a high traffic area, as well as potentially close subdivisions, office complexes and apartments. So in summary, if you are limited on space, the express car wash works with high traffic.

The economics support it. Buildermuse construction cost data puts an express exterior build at $600,000 to $800,000, running 60 to 80 feet of tunnel with a stripped down vacuum row. Meanwhile MMCG Invest reports premium express sites reaching 35 to 50 percent four wall EBITDA margins at maturity, well above the roughly 14.1 percent average operating margin across the wider operator base.

That gap exists because express automates the labor out. Where wages absorb roughly 29 percent of revenue industry wide, automated express exterior facilities often run in the low to mid teens.

Self serve: subdivisions yes, apartments no

The self serve is a good option if you have a lot of subdivisions in the area. Not so much for apartments, because a lot of apartments will offer the self service area already. You do not need to compete with that.

The self service format is also, from my experience, quite good in affluent areas, because people love their expensive cars and they love taking care of them themselves. That customer is not looking for speed. They are looking for control and a pressure washer they trust.

You do need a little bit more room than an express car wash, but it also saves on labor. Now your only costs are going to be your location cost and a little bit of supply cost.

One caution on geography. Buildermuse construction cost data notes self serve bays are primarily viable in Sun Belt markets, and puts the build at $300,000 to $600,000 for one to six bays under a single canopy. A format that requires the customer to stand outside is a harder sell in a cold January.

Full service: highest revenue, highest cost

As for full service, this can probably be the highest revenue available. But it also will cost the most to start up as well as to run.

This is excellent for a location that has quite a bit of space in a high traffic area, with communities or subdivisions nearby as well as office complexes and apartment complexes. You are asking a lot of the site, so the site has to give a lot back.

These also do well in the South and the Southwest, where the weather is warm most of the year. A full service operation carries a crew. A crew that stands idle through a wet February is an expensive crew.

On cost, Buildermuse construction cost data puts a 100 foot full tunnel at $1.0 million to $1.8 million, with a typical mid Atlantic build around $1.2 million. On the upside, MMCG Invest reports mature express exterior locations generating $1.5 million to $3.0 million in annual revenue, and a full service site with detailing attached sits at the top of that band.

The three formats side by side

Build cost figures from Buildermuse construction cost data. Land, site work and permits are separate in every case.

You do not have to pick only one

There are car washes where owners have taken the concept of using both the car wash and car detailing together. That combination is worth thinking about, because the two businesses fix each other's weaknesses.

The tunnel gives you volume and predictable throughput. Detailing gives you margin and the customer who wants their car fussed over, which is exactly the customer a tunnel loses. Run both and you stop turning away the person who says the machine does not do a good enough job.

It also solves a staffing problem. A crew that is idle between rushes is expensive. A crew that moves to a detail bay between rushes is billable. That is the same labor cost producing two revenue streams instead of one.

The caution is focus. Adding detailing to a tunnel is a real second business with its own pricing, its own training and its own scheduling. Do it deliberately or not at all.

The fourth option nobody lists

Most comparisons stop at three formats. There is a fourth, and for a lot of first time owners it is the right one: mobile.

A mobile car wash runs roughly $50,000 to $70,000. I have seen people retool their trucks so they have a water tank on the back and wash on site. It can also run as detailing, where the owner picks up the car from the client, takes it to their shop, details it, and returns it.

What mobile really buys you is education. You learn your market, your pricing, your labor and your customer without a seven figure note attached to the lesson. Some owners stay there because the margins are good and the overhead is nearly nothing. Others use it to fund and de risk a build later.

There is no rule that says you have to start at the top of this list.

How to actually decide

Work through it in this order and the answer usually picks itself.

1. How much space does the site have? Limited space rules out full service immediately.
2. What is the traffic count? Express lives or dies on drive by volume.
3. What is nearby? Subdivisions favor self serve. Apartments and office complexes favor express and full service.
4. What is the climate? Warm most of the year opens up full service and self serve. Four real seasons pushes you toward automated formats.
5. What can you fund? This comes last on purpose. Pick the right business, then work out the financing.

And remember the constraint that applies to all three. The key here is that you cannot service everybody. Target what you are good at and exploit those opportunities.

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