Private equity's car wash obsession, ranked in six numbers

The express car wash is one of the few industries where you can read the entire private equity playbook off a menu board: $12 single wash, $25 unlimited, join today. Two decades ago this was a sleepy, cash-heavy corner of the economy run by owners who actually washed cars. Then the tunnel format met the subscription, and boring turned into leverage. Ranked below, by explanatory power, are the numbers that tell you how this business really works — and where it's starting to squeal like a dry wiper blade.

1. 40–50% store margins on a $12 ticket

An express tunnel runs 2–4 staff per shift versus 8–12 at a full-service wash; labor runs roughly 15–20% of revenue, and labor plus chemicals together about 28%. That leaves mature tunnels clearing 40–50%+ store EBITDA on $700K–$2M of annual revenue at a $12–$14 average ticket. This is the whole thesis: the tunnel is a machine, and machines are easy to underwrite.

2. 79%

That is the share of Mister Car Wash's wash sales coming from its Unlimited Wash Club in Q4 2025, up from 75% a year earlier — roughly 2.3 million members paying monthly, with total revenue crossing $1 billion for the first time. The one-time car wash became a recurring-revenue business with a car attached.

3. Fourteen months of average membership

Industry monthly churn runs 7.0–7.6%, implying a 14–15 month tenure — numbers that would terrify a gym owner. But members generate roughly $440 of lifetime value over 36 months versus about $105 for repeat retail customers, because the real profit engine is the light user who washes twice and keeps paying $25–30 a month. The model quietly prices against guilt, and it works until guilt wins.

4. $385 million, a third of it an IOU

In February 2025 Driven Brands sold its ~380-site Take 5 chain to Whistle Express for $385 million — $255M cash plus a $130M seller note — largely to pay down its own debt. Whistle emerged as the largest express operator at 530 sites, then promptly sold 53 locations to Tsunami, 13 to Quick Quack, and five to Mister. Months earlier, KKR had paid $850 million for a minority stake in Quick Quack. When the sites trade hands this often, you are watching as much a valuation game as a car wash business.

5. One-third

That is roughly the volume an incumbent tunnel loses when a third competitor opens within a mile. Towns have noticed: moratoria on new washes are spreading through places like Cape Coral, Birmingham, and Windham, and acquisition multiples have compressed from the 2021 peak toward ~8x. Density was the growth story; now it is the risk factor.

6. $1 million of cash against $654 million of debt

That was Zips Car Wash on the eve of its February 2025 Chapter 11. Meanwhile the flagship round trip: Mister Car Wash IPO'd in June 2021, fell more than 70%, and Leonard Green took it back private at $7.00 a share — a $3.1 billion enterprise value and a 29% premium to a stock the public market had abandoned. The original believers bought their own exit back at a discount.

None of this means washing cars is a bad business — it is a genuinely great one, which is exactly why it attracted this much capital. What's shaky is the financing stacked on top and the cancellation flow underneath: Colorado's Cobblestone chain paid over $1 million in restitution over memberships customers struggled to cancel, and auto-renewal class actions are pending elsewhere. My opinion, clearly labeled as such: a subscription whose margins partly depend on members forgetting it exists is one subpoena away from worse churn. The tunnels will outlive their owners.