The first carwash was opened in 1914 — fittingly enough in the soon-to-be Motor City — by two Detroit businessmen who called their shop the Automated Laundry. Despite the name, this original carwash was anything but automated. Instead, it was very much a pail-and-sponge operation, but clearly its founders took cues from Henry Ford’s assembly line concept. Cars were manually pushed through a tunnel, where one attendant soaped up a car, while another would rinse and, finally, a third would dry the car.
While labor intensive, this concept proved popular among wealthy residents who wouldn’t have dreamt of washing their own car! By the 1930s, there were some 32 similar drive-through facilities in the United States — a mere fraction of locations by today’s standards. The slow growth was due to the fact that manually washing each car was too slow and labor intensive.
A better, more efficient system was needed, and it would arrive in 1940, just before America’s entry into World War II. The first truly “automatic” conveyor system opened in Hollywood, California, while similar shops had already been operating in Europe. This system allowed for the cars to be pulled through the wash by a conveyor belt, but it was still elbow grease that did most of the washing.
When the soldiers returned from war, demand for automobiles peaked, and with it, so did the desire to keep the vehicles clean.
Back in Detroit in 1946, Paul’s Automatic Auto Wash became the first semi-automatic carwash that truly reduced the human element — although Thomas Simpson has also been credited with creating this system. Either way, the carwashes of the post-World War II era quickly adopted a conveyor belt that hooked to the bumper while an overhead sprinkler with three sets of manually operated brushes cleaned the vehicle as it passed through a short tunnel. Afterward, a 50-horsepower air blower helped dry the car, reducing the need to have an employee towel dry the vehicle.
In the 1950s, it was apparent the carwash wasn’t just for rich folks anymore. Franchises were growing fast, and with it, the Automatic Car Wash Association was born in 1955. That trade group would eventually evolve into the International Carwash Association with chapters in both North America and Europe.
