An eye for detail can bring profit

Monday, June 30, 1997 | 4:41 a.m.

Detailing is the bread and butter of the car wash industry, but local operators say customers sometimes expect too much from even the most thorough cleaning jobs.

Professional CarWashing & Detailing, a trade magazine, noted in one survey that the biggest profit-making operation at a full-service car wash is the detail shop, with an 84.4 percent profit margin. An exterior-only car wash has a 41.9 percent profit margin for detailing, the magazine says.

By comparison, a full-service car wash convenience store makes a 23 percent profit while an exterior-only car wash convenience store makes a 10.8 percent profit, the magazine said.

Experts warn that even with the best chemicals and equipment on the market you can't get a used car to appear as though it just came off the assembly line.

"We are in the detailing business, not the paint restoration business," said Jim Player, who operates a Las Vegas car wash service and sells car care products to other area businesses. "If the color is burnt or badly faded there is nothing that can be done to make it look like new."

For interior work, he noted that often the only solution for bad stains on a carpet is to dye it a darker color.

"I tell the customer right up front what can be done and what can't be done even if I have to turn away business," Player said. "People should understand that we just can't make it perfect."

Las Vegas mobile car wash operators Tom Elgas and George Quintel admit that in their efforts to do as good a job as possible, they have misjudged the time it takes to do some interiors. Despite a great profit margin, such miscalculations can be costly in small operations like theirs.

"I look inside to determine if the carpet looks like a dalmation, and what it will take to remove the spots," Elgas said. "If I figure it will take 10 minutes and it winds up taking two hours, I would have to reschedule my other jobs that were set for that day."

Quintel noted: "I have been pretty lucky estimating the time it will take to do the jobs. However, more often I have misjudged the time it would take to do interiors than exteriors."

Both Elgas and Quintel said that while they will wash any car, they avoid detailing cars greater than five years old, unless they are classic automobiles or vehicles the owners have kept in great shape.

Like Player, they too are concerned that customers with older cars will expect too much and be unhappy with the results, even if a lot of effort is put into the work.

Local automatic car wash owner Bob Burglin, however, said that certain older cars can be made to look "absolutely beautiful" with a little effort.

"If you have a red, blue, black, white, green or yellow car with that chalky (oxidized) surface, you can make it look almost new," Burglin said. "However, with metallic silver or metallic gold, you can't bring back the color."