Fargo, ND Car Wash Market Analysis
Part of the Fargo, ND-MN MSA.
Data updated · May 22, 2026
Fargo: 23 car wash locations, structurally tilted toward detail shop. Format dominance breakdown, per-format quality, operator rank, customer-experience signals.
Snapshot
- Locations
- 23
- Chains
- 6
- lead: Tommy's Express® Car Wash (2)
- Avg rating
- 4.31★
- -0.10 vs MSA median
- Damage rate
- 2.4%
- 1.6× MSA norm
- Top format
- detail shop
- 61% of classified
Market Quality snapshot
- Population
- 129,064
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Households
- 58,629
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Residents per wash
- 5,611
- 2.9× the national MSA median — lighter supply
- Express tunnels per 10K households
- 0.7
- in the 0.5–1.0 filling band · classified sites
Key findings
- 23 car wash locations operated by 6 chains and 16 independents.
- Detail shop dominates: 60.9% of formally-classified locations.
- Built from 4,114 Google reviews, 1,185 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
23 car wash locations in Fargo, ND · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Fargo's car wash supply is structurally tilted toward detail shop. 60.9% of formally-classified locations operate as detail shop; the other formats appear at long-tail volume. Operating-quality signals below are best read as a study of detail shop's execution.
Headline operating signals: 4.31★ rating, 2.4% damage, 24.6% cancel friction. Aspect-level: Staff strong (0.76), equipment reliability weak (-0.89). The operator rank below shows which chains have committed most heavily to the dominant format.
See the best-rated car washes in Fargo, ND
Ranked by Google review rating
About Fargo, ND
How many car washes are in Fargo, ND?
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What is the best-rated car wash in Fargo, ND?
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Which car wash chains operate in Fargo, ND?
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What is the median household income near Fargo car washes?
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What is the average car wash rating in Fargo, ND?
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What kinds of car washes does Fargo have?
Format dominance is the structural story here. 14 of the 23 car washes in Fargo run as detail shop. The mini-table below shows how the rest of the market splits.
Highest-rated format in this market: Detail Shop at 4.93★ (14 locations). Lowest: Full Service at 3.96★ (3 locations).
| Format | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage Rate | Cancel Friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detail Shop | 14 | 60.9% | 1,096 | 4.93 | 0.18% | — |
| Express Tunnel | 4 | 17.4% | 1,211 | 4.22 | 5.00% | 25.8% |
| Full Service | 3 | 13.0% | 1,676 | 3.96 | 4.13% | 0.0% |
| In-Bay Automatic | 2 | 8.7% | 131 | 4.40 | 0.00% | 20.0% |
What is the typical household income near Fargo car washes?
Because Fargo is detail shop-dominant, the income scatter below mostly reads as a study of how that one format ranges across income tiers. The other formats show up as small splotches at the long tail.
Pearson r between ZIP income and rating across 23 qualifying locations: 0.15 — mild positive. Higher-income ZIPs host slightly better-rated washes; weak but present. Scatter mean: $79K AGI/return, 4.57★.
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 | 16 | 2,609 | 4.20 | Detail Shop (9) |
| $75K – $100K | 1 | 5 | 726 | 4.59 | Detail Shop (4) |
| $100K – $150K | 1 | 2 | 779 | 4.42 | Express Tunnel (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 Fargo car washes?
6 chains compete in Fargo, 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 | 782 | 4.20 | 7.91% | — | 0.72% |
| 2 | Tidal Wave Auto Spa | Car Wash | 1 | 278 | 4.30 | 5.56% | — | 2.08% |
| 3 | Zips Car Wash | 1 | 151 | 4.20 | — | — | — |
| 4 | Blue Beacon | 1 | 674 | 4.10 | 2.00% | — | 0.00% |
| 5 | Circle K | 1 | 15 | 3.60 | — | — | — |
| 6 | Simonson Station Stores | 1 | 116 | 4.50 | — | — | — |
What do customers love and complain about at Fargo car washes?
1,185 reviews feed the aspect grid below; -1…+1 scale, computed as (pos − neg) / total. detail shop's aspect signature drives most of these numbers.
Where are the 23 car washes in Fargo, ND?
Top locations by review count in Fargo. With 60.9% 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Beacon Truck Wash of Fargo, ND 4750 19th Ave SW, I-94, 4750 19th Ave S | Fargo, ND | Full Service | Blue Beacon | 4.1 | 674 | $71K |
| Don's Car Washes - 13th Ave 2727 13th Ave S | Fargo, ND | Full Service | — | 3.7 | 667 | $71K |
| Tommy's Express® Car Wash 4682 32nd Ave S | Fargo, ND | Express Tunnel | Tommy's Express® Car Wash | 4.2 | 563 | $102K |
| Northstar Truck Wash 990 35th St N | Fargo, ND | Full Service | — | 4.2 | 335 | $94K |
| Tidal Wave Auto Spa | Car Wash 4207 13th Ave SW | Fargo, ND | Express Tunnel | Tidal Wave Auto Spa | Car Wash | 4.3 | 278 | $71K |
| Tommy's Express® Car Wash 1702 40th St S | Fargo, ND | Express Tunnel | Tommy's Express® Car Wash | 4.2 | 219 | $71K |
| In-&-Out Auto Detailing 4066 98th Ave S | Fargo, ND | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 216 | $102K |
| Straight Line Detailing 3954 9th Ave S | Fargo, ND | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 195 | $71K |
| X-treme Detailing 1820 Sheyenne Lp N # 9 | Fargo, ND | Detail Shop | — | 4.9 | 182 | $94K |
| Zips Car Wash 1345 25th Ave S | Fargo, ND | Express Tunnel | Zips Car Wash | 4.2 | 151 | $71K |
Data as of 2026-05-22. Pick a format and click Copy.
WashIndex. (2026, May 22). Fargo, ND car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/fargo-nd
WashIndex. "Fargo, ND car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified May 22, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/fargo-nd.
"Fargo, ND car wash market analysis." WashIndex, May. 22, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/fargo-nd.
@misc{washindex_car_wash_cities_fargo_nd_2026,
title = {{Fargo, ND car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {May},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/fargo-nd},
urldate = {2026-05-22},
} About this analysis
Car wash inventory for Fargo, ND is sourced from the WashIndex national car-wash place index, filtered to places whose Google-Maps-reported city matches Fargo, 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 Fargo MSA dataset is established by point-in-polygon against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024).
Operating-quality signals are derived from 1,185 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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