Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Car Wash Revenue and Continuation Benchmark

Washing, cleaning and detailing vehicles, from self-service bays to full-service tunnels.

NAICS 811192, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Car Wash Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every car wash with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.

≈$760,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

19,422

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $14.8 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $14.8 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 19,422 employer establishments works out to $760,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Car Washes (NAICS 811192). Car washes of all formats, including self-service bays, in-bay automatics and full-service tunnels. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Throughput is an important operational driver for many car wash formats, though the Census figure measures receipts only and does not count vehicles or price per wash. The average blends unattended self-service bays with staffed tunnels and detailing shops, which is why the spread inside this category is wide.

Water, sewer and reclamation rules are local and can change the economics of a site more than pricing does, and equipment downtime removes revenue that cannot be recovered later in the day.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026

Where these figures come from
Establishment counts and combined receipts are published figures from the official source named in each figure's source line. BusinessNES divides one by the other and rounds to the nearest $10,000; no other adjustment is made. The full chain from published figure to this page is described on the methodology page.

Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group

Automotive repair and maintenance, NAICS 8111, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

59.2%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 80.0 percent at 1 year, 71.5 percent at 2 years, 66.9 percent at 3 years, 62.9 percent at 4 years, 59.2 percent at 5 years. 9,880 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 57.3 to 60.2 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 80.0 percent of the starting count2 years: 71.5 percent of the starting count3 years: 66.9 percent of the starting count4 years: 62.9 percent of the starting count5 years: 59.2 percent of the starting count80.071.566.962.959.2Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years9,880 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 59 establishments aged five for every 100 that first reported paid employment in 2018. Census compares counts by age rather than following the same businesses, so read it as a broad continuation indicator for the industry group, not as a tracked survival rate.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 57.3 to 60.2 percent. This benchmark covers Automotive repair and maintenance, NAICS 8111, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for car washes on their own: they are 19,422 of the 167,855 employer establishments in that group, about 12 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll here covers attendants, detailers and managers, not the chemicals, water or equipment leases that shape a wash bay's monthly bill.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈30%

Payroll share of receipts, Car Washes, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 30.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Automation carries much of this trade: the payroll share sits below the hand-served trades, and equipment doing work that attendants would otherwise do is the usual explanation, while the capital it replaces them with does not appear in this figure at all.

This is not total labor cost or profit margin.

How to read this number
Payroll here is the census annual payroll figure, PAYANN: it includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses paid to employees, and it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and proprietor compensation. BusinessNES divides it by the same category total receipts, RCPTOT, and rounds to a whole percent.

Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data

Where this category sits among 7 automotive service categories in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.

MeasureThis categoryGroup medianRank
Revenue per employer establishment$762,434$844,2255 of 7
Payroll share of receipts29.85%26.82%1 of 7
Employer establishments19,4229,8933 of 7

Position among 7 automotive service categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category ranks 5th of 7 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 3rd of 7 by employer establishment count and 1st of 7 by payroll share. Payroll equals 29.85 percent of receipts here, 3.03 percentage points above the group median of 26.82 percent. A higher or lower position is not a measure of profit or of business quality: the census reports receipts and payroll only.

Compared With Similar Business Types Computed from official data

The 4 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.

Census categoryRevenue per establishmentPayroll shareEstablishments
Car Washes (this page)$762,43429.85%19,422
Specialized Automotive Repair$735,05325.94%8,042
General Automotive Repair$844,22526.41%84,104
All Other Automotive Repair and Maintenance$674,37326.97%4,813
Automotive Oil Change and Lubrication Shops$975,11026.82%9,893

Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than General Automotive Repair and Automotive Oil Change and Lubrication Shops, and higher revenue than Specialized Automotive Repair and All Other Automotive Repair and Maintenance. It contains more employer establishments than three of the four categories shown. Every figure in this table comes from the same 2022 Economic Census release and the same employer establishment population, so the columns are directly comparable.

Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis

What the census figures leave out about car washes, and what to look at instead.

What the numbers do not show

This category counts express tunnels, full-service sites, self bays and mobile operators together, and their cost structures have little in common. A tunnel is a capital business with low labor; a self-serve site is close to real estate with a water bill.

Membership revenue is invisible in this figure. Where unlimited wash plans exist they convert weather-dependent traffic into subscription revenue, which changes the business more than any pricing decision.

Operator lens

  • Stacking space and exit flow cap a busy Saturday. Stacking space, entry visibility and how cars leave the property decide the practical ceiling long before the tunnel does.
  • Water and reclaim costs move with local rules. Discharge requirements and reclaim mandates vary by municipality and can turn an ordinary site into an expensive one.

Questions to ask before starting or buying

  • What is the membership base and its churn? Ask for active plans and monthly cancellations, because a subscription base carries high value here and can erode quickly.
  • How old is the tunnel equipment? Conveyors, brushes and dryers wear on a known schedule and replacement is measured in weeks of closure.
  • What does the site allow at peak? Count how many cars can queue without blocking the road; that number caps a busy Saturday.
  • What are the water and discharge obligations? Reclaim systems and sewer agreements are local, expensive and not always current.
  • How exposed is the location to weather patterns? Ask for monthly volumes across a full year rather than an annual total.

Models worth considering

  • Sell the subscription, not the wash Unlimited plans smooth revenue across bad weather and change the customer relationship from transactional to recurring.
  • Use the lot when the tunnel is quiet Detailing, ceramic coating and fleet contracts use the same site during hours when retail traffic is thin.
  • Serve the vehicles nobody else wants Oversized vehicles, work trucks and roof racks are turned away by most tunnels, which makes them a defensible niche for a site built to take them.

Explore More on BusinessNES

More BusinessNES guides and rankings, plus neighboring benchmark pages built from the same verified data.

Sources and Methodology

Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group, along with the ranks, medians and nearest peers in the comparison sections, comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.

Category scope matters: these figures cover Car Washes (NAICS 811192), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. For car washes, remember the average mixes unattended bays with staffed tunnels, so the typical single site sits below the mean.

Full method, sources and limits
The methodology page describes the full chain for every figure on this site: the published source, the sealed snapshot it was read from, the exact calculation if BusinessNES performed one, and the honest limits of scope and vintage. Read the methodology.

Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.