Fort Collins, CO Car Wash Market Analysis
Part of the Fort Collins-Loveland, CO MSA.
Data updated · June 9, 2026
26 car washes, 6 chains, 1,808 AI-extracted reviews — concentrated more than the typical US market. Operator concentration, per-chain quality, format mix, customer-experience signals.
Snapshot
- Locations
- 26
- Chains
- 6
- lead: Signal Car Wash at Loaf n Jug (6)
- Avg rating
- 4.27★
- -0.14 vs MSA median
- Damage rate
- 2.0%
- 1.3× MSA norm
- Top format
- detail shop
- 38% of classified
Market Quality snapshot
- Population
- 169,705
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Households
- 70,782
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Residents per wash
- 6,527
- 3.4× 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
- 26 car wash locations operated by 6 chains and 10 independents.
- Top 10 chains control 61.5% of locations — above the 11.4% US-market median, led by Signal Car Wash at Loaf n Jug (6 sites).
- Built from 6,397 Google reviews, 1,808 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
26 car wash locations in Fort Collins, CO · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Fort Collins stands out for how much chain rollup has reshaped supply. Across 26 tracked locations, the top ten operators control 61.5% of supply — above the 11.4% US-market median, with Signal Car Wash at Loaf n Jug the largest at 6 sites. The headline averages below behave like chain averages — the per-chain table is the right cut to read.
Average rating 4.27★ across 26 sites; damage 2.0%; cancel friction 16.1% of mem-discussing reviews. Equipment reliability is the sharpest friction point (-0.70). Because the operator mix is concentrated, those numbers behave more like chain averages than market averages.
See the best-rated car washes in Fort Collins, CO
Ranked by Google review rating
Car wash financing in Fort Collins, CO
Since 2010, the U.S. Small Business Administration has backed 6 car-wash loans in Fort Collins, CO worth $3.3M, at a median of $562,000 per car wash. About 67% funded brand-new or startup car washes.
- New build / open17% · $126K
- Expansion / improvement67% · $841K
- Working capital17% · $20K
Source: U.S. Small Business Administration 7(a) & 504 FOIA datasets (NAICS 811192), data through 2026-03-31. See the Car Wash Lending Tracker for national figures and methodology.
About Fort Collins, CO
How many car washes are in Fort Collins, CO?
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What is the best-rated car wash in Fort Collins, CO?
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Which car wash chains operate in Fort Collins, CO?
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What is the median household income near Fort Collins car washes?
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What is the average car wash rating in Fort Collins, CO?
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What kinds of car washes does Fort Collins have?
Because chain operators have consolidated supply here, format counts below skew toward the formats those chains build at scale. The lowest-rated format is usually a long-tail mix of small operators rather than a meaningful share of the market.
Highest-rated format in this market: Detail Shop at 4.92★ (10 locations). Lowest: Full Service at 3.60★ (1 locations).
| Format | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage Rate | Cancel Friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detail Shop | 10 | 38.5% | 1,436 | 4.92 | 0.15% | 0.0% |
| Self-Serve Bay | 7 | 26.9% | 503 | 3.71 | 0.00% | — |
| Express Tunnel | 5 | 19.2% | 2,977 | 4.33 | 4.95% | 18.1% |
| In-Bay Automatic | 3 | 11.5% | 863 | 3.83 | 1.21% | 11.8% |
| Full Service | 1 | 3.8% | 618 | 3.60 | 2.27% | 33.3% |
What is the typical household income near Fort Collins car washes?
The scatter below joins IRS Statistics-of-Income (mean AGI per return, 2022 tax year) to each car wash's ZIP. In Fort Collins, where chains have aggressively rolled up supply, expect the densest car wash deployment in middle-to-upper-middle income ZIPs.
Pearson r between ZIP income and rating across 26 qualifying locations: -0.09 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income here. Scatter mean: $96K AGI/return, 4.22★.
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 | 349 | 3.96 | Self-Serve Bay (1) |
| $75K – $100K | 3 | 23 | 6,023 | 4.30 | Detail Shop (9) |
| $100K – $150K | 1 | 1 | 25 | 3.40 | Self-Serve Bay (1) |
| $150K+ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
The highest-income tier ($150K+) holds 0 car washes across 0 ZIPs at 0.00★; the lowest-income tier (Under $50K) holds 0 across 0 ZIPs at 0.00★. In a chain-consolidated market like Fort Collins, the income mix mostly reads as a record of where the top operators chose to deploy — middle-income ZIPs typically anchor the densest rollouts.
Who operates the most Fort Collins car washes?
6 chains operate in Fort Collins, with the top ten holding 61.5% of supply. Damage rate, cancel friction, and per-aspect ratings are broken out per chain — useful for understanding which operators drive the metro's headline numbers.
| # | Chain | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage | Cancel | Upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Signal Car Wash at Loaf n Jug | 6 | 224 | 3.59 | — | — | — |
| 2 | Autowash Headquarters | 3 | 863 | 3.83 | 1.21% | 11.8% | 1.51% |
| 3 | Breeze Thru Car Wash - Windsor | 3 | 2,218 | 4.33 | 7.14% | 11.1% | 1.90% |
| 4 | Cobblestone Car Wash | 2 | 759 | 4.31 | 3.58% | 25.5% | 2.09% |
| 5 | Auto-Glow Detailing | Mobile Detailing Fort Collins | 1 | 18 | 5.00 | — | — | — |
| 6 | Zz Denver Mobile Detailing | 1 | 89 | 4.90 | — | — | — |
What do customers love and complain about at Fort Collins car washes?
1,808 reviews feed the aspect grid below; each is computed as (positive − negative) / total, on a -1…+1 scale. In Fort Collins, the dominant chains' aspect profiles drive most of the metro-wide score.
Where are the 26 car washes in Fort Collins, CO?
26 car washes in the Fort Collins city; the top of the list (ranked by review volume) is shown below. Most high-volume sites here belong to a top-10 chain.
| Location | City | Format | Chain | Rating | Reviews | ZIP AGI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breeze Thru Car Wash - Mulberry Fort Collins 1171 E Mulberry St | Fort Collins, CO | Express Tunnel | Breeze Thru Car Wash - Windsor | 4.3 | 1,289 | $99K |
| Breeze Thru Car Wash - South College Fort Collins 3141 S College Ave | Fort Collins, CO | Express Tunnel | Breeze Thru Car Wash - Windsor | 4.4 | 913 | $96K |
| Casey's Car Wash & Detail Center 4315 S Mason St | Fort Collins, CO | Full Service | — | 3.6 | 618 | $96K |
| Cobblestone Car Wash 3500 S Timberline Rd | Fort Collins, CO | Express Tunnel | Cobblestone Car Wash | 4.4 | 542 | $96K |
| FOCO Fresh Detail 1305 Duff Dr STE 5 | Fort Collins, CO | Detail Shop | — | 4.9 | 399 | $99K |
| Autowash @ JFK Pkwy Car Wash 4221 John F Kennedy Pkwy | Fort Collins, CO | In-Bay Automatic | Autowash Headquarters | 3.8 | 361 | $96K |
| Sticklers 4 Details - Auto Detailing & Ceramic Coatings 414 S Summit View Dr | Fort Collins, CO | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 288 | $99K |
| City Park Car Wash & Auto Detail 505 S Taft Hill Rd | Fort Collins, CO | Self-Serve Bay | — | 3.8 | 279 | $68K |
| Autowash @ Manhattan Car Wash 3614 Manhattan Ave | Fort Collins, CO | In-Bay Automatic | Autowash Headquarters | 3.9 | 268 | $81K |
| Autowash @ Spring Creek Car Wash 2102 Midpoint Dr | Fort Collins, CO | In-Bay Automatic | Autowash Headquarters | 3.8 | 234 | $96K |
Compare Fort Collins to other car wash markets in the Fort Collins metro
Cities in the same metro, ordered by closest comparable size. Each link runs the same operator concentration, format mix, and customer-experience analysis.
Data as of 2026-06-09. Pick a format and click Copy.
WashIndex. (2026, June 9). Fort Collins, CO car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/fort-collins-co
WashIndex. "Fort Collins, CO car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified June 9, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/fort-collins-co.
"Fort Collins, CO car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Jun. 9, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/fort-collins-co.
@misc{washindex_car_wash_cities_fort_collins_co_2026,
title = {{Fort Collins, CO car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {Jun},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/fort-collins-co},
urldate = {2026-06-09},
} About this analysis
Car wash inventory for Fort Collins, CO is sourced from the WashIndex national car-wash place index, filtered to places whose Google-Maps-reported city matches Fort Collins, 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 Fort Collins MSA dataset is established by point-in-polygon against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024).
Operating-quality signals are derived from 1,808 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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