Truck Wash Chain Development

Originally I had hoped to name the Truck Washes similarly to the Car Wash chain we are attempting to create ("Best Car Wash" -> "Best Truck Wash"). I do have several other contenders for this title though, and am leaning closer and closer to a separation of the two chains - for branding, growth, and resale reasons. Separation would lead to easier portional sales and a higher return for each as sold separately. Mind you, the other way to handle this would be to incorporate a separate company which owns the trademark on the name and license it out to the individual locations.

The potential name highlights (Note that Automatic, Industrial, and Truck are relatively interchangeable in all cases) :

• QuickTrip Truck Wash (My tied - personal favorite as it encompasses the majority of the 20 minute automatic wash concept)
• EasyClean Truck Wash (My tied - personal favorite as it encompasses the majority of the 20 minute automatic wash concept)
• Happy Habor Truck Wash
• Green Geyser Truck Wash (Kind of Ecofriendly...)
• Steady Stream Truck Wash
• Northern Storm/ Northern Power Truck Wash (Alienates southerners....)
• Surge Truck Wash
• Monsoon Industrial Wash (Another favorite)
• Crankshaft's Industrial Wash (Another favorite)
• Splash N Dash (better suited to a self serve)
• Suds N Buckets (Better suited to a self serve)

The "big guys" in the USA are Blue Beacon Truck Washes (http://www.bluebeacon.com), but their model revolves more around 24 self serve stations with staff as opposed to 24 hour automatics. My preference in this case goes to the automatics as an owner - minimal staffing, minimized cleanup, no caustic/acid issues, and on and on. The main drawback would be the potential for increased damage if you don't have monitoring systems available.

Blue Beacon has over 100 locations between the USA and Canada, and I think that given the right length of development (10 years), this new concept truck wash would be able to easily achieve half of that number throughout Canada following the major trading routes. There may even be a method or two to not only weather the economic downturn, but to flourish as well.

Flying J is our major concern in Alberta (http://www.flyingj.com). This is a mega-chain and I feel somewhat like a small mom-and-pop going up against Wal-Mart by competing against them, but they have not yet made a major foothold into Canada and in the intervening time much can be accomplished. Road Ranger in the Midwestern United States seems to have followed this philosophy as well, and is currently implementing it with considerable success - mind you, that still has to be confirmed.

The other major competitor would be the Truck Wash Guys (http://www.truckwashguy.com) especially as we venture into the Western Seaboard and other areas. It's almost a different market they are trying to capture - but this type of operation requires alot of manpower and replacement of manpower would be the major area of concern

Well, here's to the future.