A national look at car washes and detailers. All figures are Groundwork estimates. Map listings show 49,135 car washes and detailers in the U.S., and 23% of them are chain locations. That works out to 3.8 per 10,000 households. Official business counts show 19,807 car washes with payroll in 2023, up 16.7% since 2019. Household spending on vehicle maintenance and repairs comes to about $2.5M per listing. Washes share that spending with repair shops, so read it as demand per competitor, not as revenue. These are the top 5 metro areas of 1 million people or more by market score. The score weighs spending per competitor, households per business, population growth and spending power. 1. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA: redactedlistings per 10k households) 2. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA: redacted) 3. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI: redacted) 4. Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA: redacted) 5. Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN: redacted) If you're looking at washes, what do you check first: how many washes are within a few miles, traffic at the site, or how many customers are on memberships? Full rankings: redacted