Car wash industry may be at capacity in Queen City

Last edited 1:25 p.m., June 19, 2025 [Editor's note: Blue Iguana has six car washes. The number has been corrected.]

He’s a local player in the area’s seemingly glutted car wash scene involving national companies, but Greg Byler, co-owner with his wife, Robin, of Blue Iguana LLC, has shown he has a pretty good bead on what’s happening in his industry.

“It turns out that most of the car wash companies didn’t know what they were doing and overplayed their hand,” he said in a recent interview – a follow-up to a conversation that began in 2022, when Springfield Business Journal first reached out to him about the city’s sudden surge in car washes.

SBJ first contacted Byler about the status of the local car wash market in November 2022 when Springfield’s seventh Mister Car Wash opened. Mister is a publicly traded company with some 475 locations across the U.S., according to its website – and despite the common perception, not all of them are in the Queen City.

Another player that opened in 2022, McBee’s Coffee N Carwash at 1212 W. Kearney St., offered a new concept – frothy coffee drinks to sip as one’s car is guided through the automated cleaning tunnel.

What seemed like an innovative approach didn’t catch on, and McBee’s – a side venture by Gallatin-based McBee Farm & Cattle Co. – closed in fall 2024.

Byler, with the newest of six Blue Iguana locations located right across the street from McBee’s, watched it go down.

“One car wash couldn’t wash enough cars to make it make enough sense to them,” Byler said of McBee’s. “The concept made sense, but I didn’t think they executed it really well.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Byler said, businesses that offered food products were able to stay open while Blue Iguana was shut down.

“Had we been food people – and I assume coffee would have taken care of that – we could have stayed open,” he said. “Someone made the suggestion of a drive-thru pizza place – you order on the front end and pick it up at the end.”

Byler seemed to be half-joking – but with what appears to be local market saturation for car washes, a unique value proposition makes sense.

Take 5 acquired
Rodney Long is regional director of operations over the Mountain Central district of Driven Brands, operator of the Take 5 brand of car washes, two of which are operational in Springfield. Long said there are a few difference-makers in the Take 5 operation. One is the way staff prep vehicles, using a brush to get what he calls “bug stuff” off windows and grills on the front end and off license plates in the back. Another is the Armor All brand products used in the cleaning bay and made available free for customer use.

Some car washes offer the enhanced visitor experience of colored lights that make a psychedelic show out of the soaped-up windshield.

“We have some lights, but we don’t have as many as some other vendors have,” Long said. “Ours is more about the quality and the wash of the car than it is the show and the pow and the wow.”

Take 5 car washes will soon make a transition nationally. Driven Brands (NASDAQ: DRVN) – which also owns myriad other automotive companies, like Meineke Car Care Center, Auto Glass Now, Maaco Collision Repair & Auto Painting and Take 5 Oil Change – has sold its Take 5 car washes to Whistle Express in what is described by Yahoo Finance at the largest deal in express car wash history.

The acquisition, backed by Oaktree Capital Management LP, closed in April, and the transition of Take 5 to Whistle Express branding will be phased in from now through the end of 2027. The $535 million deal included some 380 car washes nationwide.

Yahoo Finance reports Whistle Express now operates 530 locations across 23 states, making it the largest express car wash company in the country. The move includes a promise of significant investments in car wash equipment, enhanced technology and signage.

“As we move our washes to Whistle, you’re going to find we redo the tunnels for more of a light show, as well as increased focus on the quality of the wash,” Long said.

Byler said Whistle Express bought low.

“They were doing very, very poorly, that division,” he said of Driven Brands’ Take 5 Car Wash brand. “They got what I think was a fire sale.”

Long agrees that Take 5 was doing poorly with its car wash brand.

“We were not in a good position, business-wise,” he said. “We had actually outbuilt our support mechanisms.”

The elephant in the room – or rather, the elephant squatting at the corner of Glenstone Avenue and Cherry Street – is a brand new but never opened car wash built by Take 5 and sitting idle.

Asked what would happen with the site, Long declined to comment.

“It’s not something I can talk about,” he said.

But Long said the location is part of a great build-out that happened about a year and a half ago.

“At the time, Driven Brands had a different leader. He was all about growing as fast as you can, as far out as you possibly can go,” he said.

At the idle site, he said, the land was purchased and the building was completed with almost everything needed to operate a car wash, except for some pay stations and other minor details.

“At one point, everything stopped,” he said. “Last year, Driven and Take 5 did not do any new builds and did not open any new locations.”

Commercial developer Curtis Jared of Jared Commercial & Management LLC brokered the real estate deal for the site – a deal that happened and was completed, with Jared moving on to other concerns, like the city’s second Target location, now under construction. But Jared said he feels like he is asked about the Glenstone and Cherry car wash almost daily.

“I’m wondering if maybe – and this is 100% my speculation – somebody’s maybe looking to sell out or buy somebody else out,” Jared said.

People keep asking why he’s not running the car wash on the site, but Jared said he has nothing to do with it.

“I had a call today – someone said the city was out there measuring the grass,” he said. “They said, ‘You’ll probably get a letter in the mail.’ We’re not getting a letter in the mail.”

Jared said it’s not unlikely that some other real estate acquisition may be in the works at the site.

But will it operate as a car wash? It’s hard to say. Jared said he used to get lots of queries about potential sites for car washes. Those queries have slowed, he said.

Private equity
Byler told SBJ in 2022 that private equity used to put its money in strip malls, but then customers started ordering from Amazon.com. That meant investors turned their attention to services.

“You can’t buy a car wash on Amazon,” he said at the time.

Same goes for self-storage units, veterinary clinics and dental offices – all businesses that are also attractive to private equity firms. He noted the firms aggregate cash from multiple investors and roll up as many car washes – or other service-based businesses – as they can for the funds available. Often, those investments are sold multiple times.

“This is where they’re overplaying their hand, and I hope they don’t take us all down with them,” Byler said at the time.

Today, Byler said he recognizes some benefit.

“To their credit, private equity has shored up the car wash industry in a way,” he said. “With all the money they brought in, they also brought in a lot of professionalism.”

Byler said he thinks Blue Iguana was always very professional, constantly upgrading its systems.

“We got an enormous amount of computers in a car wash – it would blow your mind,” he said.

Byler said Blue Iguana is a truly local company that has one focus: washing cars.

“We’re single-dimensional – all we do is car washes,” he said. “That’s what we spend our time on, and we try to make it better with every opportunity. We don’t have a backup plan.”

Long said although it’s a large national company, the Take 5/Whistle Express brand is also very invested in the community. He has lived in the Springfield metro area since 2015.

The Springfield car wash market is full, according to Long, but that doesn’t necessarily represent the industry as a whole.

“Oftentimes, we look at our surroundings and we convince ourselves that the way it is here is the way it is everywhere,” he said. “We have so many car washes here in the Springfield area.”

There are opportunities in smaller communities, he said, but those promise slower and more minimal returns on investments. People who live in outlying towns likely wash their car where they work and shop, in Springfield.

Long said for a while, companies like his and like Mister, Glide Express and McBee’s were developing car washes as Iguana was building them and making acquisitions.

“It was popping like popcorn,” he said. “Now the first one has fallen off the grid with McBee’s, and we need to take a pause – possibly we’re overpopulated.”

It wouldn’t surprise Long, he said, if one of the major players in the city – he wouldn’t say which – were to sell.

“It’s kind of their model. I’ve been waiting for it to happen,” he said.

But outside of Springfield, Long said, car washes are going up left and right. His district includes Kansas City and St. Louis and also expands westward into Colorado and Utah. Some smaller companies are looking at dominating rural car wash business, but his company and some others – he cited Cobblestone Auto Spa and Quick Quack Car Wash – continue to open multiple new locations in metro areas – just not, for now, in Springfield.