Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Oil Change Shop Revenue and Continuation Benchmark

Fast service outlets that change oil and perform routine lubrication and fluid work.

NAICS 811191, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Oil Change Shop Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

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

≈$980,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

9,893

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $9.6 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $9.6 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 9,893 employer establishments works out to $980,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Automotive Oil Change and Lubrication Shops (NAICS 811191). Oil change and lubrication work only; general repair and specialty shops are separate categories. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

A quick lube bay sells one small job many times a day, with no appointment book and no diagnostic work, which is the opposite of the shops it sits beside in the same Census group. Quick lube outlets are usually described as running on visit frequency rather than ticket size, though the Census data measure receipts only and count neither visits nor bay times. What the figure does establish is scope: it excludes general repair, so it is a cleaner read on the maintenance trade than a whole workshop average would be.

Longer manufacturer service intervals and the slow arrival of electric vehicles both reduce visits per car per year, which matters more to this trade than to general repair.

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 oil change and lubrication shops on their own: they are 9,893 of the 167,855 employer establishments in that group, about 6 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers bay technicians and service writers, not the oil, filters and fluids that make up a large share of each ticket.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈27%

Payroll share of receipts, Automotive Oil Change and Lubrication Shops, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 27.0 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. Technicians here are paid to keep bay times short rather than to diagnose faults, so payroll behaves like a throughput cost and moves with opening hours more than with ticket value.

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$975,110$844,2253 of 7
Payroll share of receipts26.82%26.82%4 of 7
Employer establishments9,8939,8934 of 7

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

This category ranks 3rd of 7 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 4th of 7 by employer establishment count and 4th of 7 by payroll share. Payroll equals 26.82 percent of receipts here, exactly the group median. 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
Automotive Oil Change and Lubrication Shops (this page)$975,11026.82%9,893
Automotive Glass Replacement Shops$1,079,17622.59%6,963
General Automotive Repair$844,22526.41%84,104
Car Washes$762,43429.85%19,422
Specialized Automotive Repair$735,05325.94%8,042

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

This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Automotive Glass Replacement Shops, and higher revenue than General Automotive Repair, Car Washes and Specialized Automotive Repair. It contains more employer establishments than two 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.

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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 Automotive Oil Change and Lubrication Shops (NAICS 811191), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. For oil change shops, note that the category excludes general repair, so the average is not comparable with a full workshop.

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.

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