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CASE STUDY BY DAVIDDOUGHERTY To help enhance its growth in the St. Louis car wash market, Wallis Companies relies on equipment from PDQ Manufacturing, Inc. CASE STUDY: IN THE NICK OF TIME wash industry, 10 years is a critical block of time since most pieces of car wash equipment can be expected to perform reliably, efficiently and economically for that time span. It’s when the conclusion of a decade—where did all that time go?—of reliable service approaches that car wash operators have to begin reassessing the peformance of their equipment, as well as evolving customer wash habits and market demo- graphics, and decide whether repair, replacement, upgrade, or a switch to a new supplier with new, cutting-edge wash technology is the best way to head into the future. Wallis Companies found itself in that position in 2001. T Founded in 1968 in Cuba, MO, which is located 80 miles southwest of St. Louis, when Bill Wallis, with his wife Lynn, purchased a small gasoline distributorship there.Wallis has grown to become one of the Midwest’s leading distributors and retailers of petroleum products under the Mobil, BP, Conoco and Phillips brand names. As a top distributor for ExxonMobil since 1996, Wallis has converted many of its convenience-store locations to ExxonMobil’s “On The Run” concept, which was introduced in 2000. In 2001, the 10-year in-service window for most of the equipment at Wallis’ 30-plus retail car washing sites,many of which are situated in the St. Louis metropolitan area, was closing. In assessing the performance of its touch-free in-bay wash systems,Wallis management determined that it wasn’t 100 percent satisfied with the performance of the current equipment in place and began looking for a new equipment supplier that could help it “reload”—to use the Wallis ver- nacular—its sites. THE CHALLENGE Saying you need a new supplier and finding the right one 10 MARCH 2011 EN YEARS MAY SEEM LIKE A REALLY LONG TIME, but when recalling the rate of passage of those years, the description of how the former million- aire lost all of his money often comes to mind: Little by little—then all at once. In the retail car David Dougherty is the Senior Product Manager for In-Bay Automatics at PDQ Manufacturing, Inc., De Pere, WI. For more information, visit www.pdqinc.comor call (800) 227-3373. David can be reached at David.Dougherty@pdqinc.com. are two completely different things. On top of that, as Wallis began its search, the company noticed how much more sophisticated car wash equip- ment had become, with a slew of technological advances entering the market, all of which promised to deliver a cleaner, more satisfying wash experience—but at what cost? “As car wash equipment has gotten more technologically advanced, the equipment has become more challenging,” explained Chad Wallis, general manager of Wallis Companies. “Challenging in a good way in that you’re get- ting top performance and the most-advanced equipment with improved services, but along with that you’re chal- lenged with increased cost of operation and cost of owner- ship. It’s become a balancing act.” A pivotal component in achieving that balance is the cus- tomer. A car wash can have all the bells and whistles, but, in the end, if it doesn’t produce a vehicle that has been cleaned to the customer’s level of expectation then it will drive that customer away, as well as limit the number of new customers that might frequent the wash. So, that was the mindset that Wallis carried into its search for a new car wash equipment supplier. THE SOLUTION The end of another car wash equipment cycle was rapidly approaching in 2010 and Wallis was beginning the reassess- ment process to determine which of its sites needed to be reloaded. For those sites that needed new equipment, the answer turned out to be a new equipment option from PDQ Manufacturing, Inc.,De Pere, WI, which had developed and released the Tandem® RiteTouch Vehicle Wash System to the market. NPN Magazine www.npnweb.com