Bismarck, ND Car Wash Market Analysis
Part of the Bismarck, ND MSA.
Data updated · May 22, 2026
814 Google reviews across 9 Bismarck car washes — a detail shop-dominant market. Format dominance breakdown, per-format quality, operator rank, customer-experience signals.
Snapshot
- Locations
- 9
- Chains
- 2
- lead: Tommy's Express® Car Wash (2)
- Avg rating
- 4.16★
- -0.25 vs MSA median
- Damage rate
- 4.6%
- 2.9× MSA norm
- Top format
- detail shop
- 56% of classified
Market Quality snapshot
- Population
- 74,146
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Households
- 32,208
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Residents per wash
- 8,238
- 4.3× the national MSA median — lighter supply
- Express tunnels per 10K households
- 0.6
- in the 0.5–1.0 filling band · classified sites
Key findings
- 9 car wash locations operated by 2 chains and 6 independents.
- Detail shop dominates: 55.6% of formally-classified locations.
- Built from 814 Google reviews, 260 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
9 car wash locations in Bismarck, ND · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Bismarck's car wash supply is structurally tilted toward detail shop. 55.6% of formally-classified locations operate as detail shop; the other formats appear at long-tail volume. That makes the metro a useful read on how detail shop performs at scale.
Average rating 4.16★; damage 4.6%; detail shop averages 4.90★. Equipment reliability runs as the friction point (-0.91). 814 Google reviews back the analysis, 260 LLM-extracted across 55 dimensions.
See the best-rated car washes in Bismarck, ND
Ranked by Google review rating
About Bismarck, ND
How many car washes are in Bismarck, ND?
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What is the best-rated car wash in Bismarck, ND?
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Which car wash chains operate in Bismarck, ND?
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What is the median household income near Bismarck car washes?
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What is the average car wash rating in Bismarck, ND?
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What kinds of car washes does Bismarck have?
Detail shop dominates Bismarck — 55.6% of formally-classified locations. The table below shows how the long tail breaks down: typically a thin layer of full-service, detail-shop, or self-serve operators serving a different occasion than the dominant format.
Highest-rated format in this market: Detail Shop at 4.90★ (5 locations). Lowest: Express Tunnel at 3.68★ (2 locations).
| Format | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage Rate | Cancel Friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detail Shop | 5 | 55.6% | 254 | 4.90 | 0.00% | — |
| Express Tunnel | 2 | 22.2% | 369 | 3.68 | 11.43% | 5.6% |
| Self-Serve Bay | 1 | 11.1% | 181 | 4.10 | 0.00% | — |
| In-Bay Automatic | 1 | 11.1% | 10 | 4.00 | 0.00% | — |
What is the typical household income near Bismarck car washes?
Income context is most useful in Bismarck for understanding where detail shop clusters: typically in suburban middle-income ZIPs where its unit economics work. The scatter below makes the pattern visible.
Pearson r between ZIP income and rating across 9 qualifying locations: 0.32 — mild positive. Higher-income ZIPs host slightly better-rated washes; weak but present. Scatter mean: $93K AGI/return, 4.47★.
Car wash count and quality by income tier
Blue bars: location count per tier. Orange tick marks: average Google rating (same y-axis).
| Income tier (mean AGI/return) | ZIPs | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Top Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $50K | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
| $50K – $75K | 1 | 2 | 480 | 3.79 | Self-Serve Bay (1) |
| $75K – $100K | 1 | 6 | 324 | 4.71 | Detail Shop (5) |
| $100K – $150K | 1 | 1 | 10 | 4.00 | In-Bay Automatic (1) |
| $150K+ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
0 car washes at the top income tier (0.00★) vs. 0 at the bottom (0.00★). Detail shops concentrate in middle-income ZIPs — that's the part of the curve where the unit economics actually work.
Who operates the most Bismarck car washes?
2 chains compete in Bismarck, with the top names typically being heavy detail shop operators. The damage and cancel-friction columns below tell you which chains do this format well and which do it poorly.
| # | Chain | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage | Cancel | Upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tommy's Express® Car Wash | 2 | 369 | 3.68 | 11.43% | — | 0.00% |
| 2 | Simonson Station Stores | 1 | 10 | 4.00 | — | — | — |
What do customers love and complain about at Bismarck car washes?
Staff stands out positively (0.84); equipment reliability stands out as the friction point (-0.91).
Where are the 9 car washes in Bismarck, ND?
Top locations by review count in Bismarck. With 55.6% of classified sites running as detail shop, the format column below reads consistently rather than varying across the list.
| Location | City | Format | Chain | Rating | Reviews | ZIP AGI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tommy's Express® Car Wash 1800 N 12th St | Bismarck, ND | Express Tunnel | Tommy's Express® Car Wash | 3.6 | 299 | $72K |
| King Koin Laundry, Car Wash 2125 E Thayer Ave | Bismarck, ND | Self-Serve Bay | — | 4.1 | 181 | $72K |
| Maddog's Auto Styling 837 Burlington Dr #306 | Bismarck, ND | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 76 | $96K |
| Infinity Auto Styling 2909 Morrison Ave C | Bismarck, ND | Detail Shop | — | 4.9 | 75 | $96K |
| Tommy's Express® Car Wash 925 E Bismarck Expy | Bismarck, ND | Express Tunnel | Tommy's Express® Car Wash | 4.0 | 70 | $96K |
| Destin2Shine of ND/Ceramic Pro Bismarck 1365 Tacoma Ave Ste 5 | Bismarck, ND | Detail Shop | — | 4.8 | 46 | $96K |
| SS Auto Care 806 Airport Rd | Bismarck, ND | Detail Shop | — | 4.8 | 44 | $96K |
| Black Star Motorsports 1409 Lockheed Dr Shop 12 | Bismarck, ND | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 13 | $96K |
| Simonson Car Wash - North Bismarck 1309 E Interstate Ave | Bismarck, ND | In-Bay Automatic | Simonson Station Stores | 4.0 | 10 | $118K |
Data as of 2026-05-22. Pick a format and click Copy.
WashIndex. (2026, May 22). Bismarck, ND car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/bismarck-nd
WashIndex. "Bismarck, ND car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified May 22, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/bismarck-nd.
"Bismarck, ND car wash market analysis." WashIndex, May. 22, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/bismarck-nd.
@misc{washindex_car_wash_cities_bismarck_nd_2026,
title = {{Bismarck, ND car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {May},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/bismarck-nd},
urldate = {2026-05-22},
} About this analysis
Car wash inventory for Bismarck, ND is sourced from the WashIndex national car-wash place index, filtered to places whose Google-Maps-reported city matches Bismarck, and further restricted to places whose format the WashIndex LLM classifier identified as a car wash (excluding dealerships, gas stations, and other auto-related businesses that don't primarily operate a car wash). Inclusion in the parent Bismarck MSA dataset is established by point-in-polygon against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024).
Operating-quality signals are derived from 260 customer reviews processed through WashIndex's 55-field LLM extraction pipeline. Format classification comes from a separate per-location website-reading classifier. ZIP-level income data is from the IRS Statistics of Income (tax year 2022) — mean Adjusted Gross Income per tax return, which is directionally aligned with ACS median household income but available without authentication.
See our full methodology for the extraction pipeline, validation samples, and aggregation logic. Term definitions in the glossary.
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