Lawrence, KS Car Wash Market Analysis
Part of the Lawrence, KS MSA.
Data updated · May 22, 2026
1,980 Google reviews across 12 Lawrence car washes — a detail shop-dominant market. Format dominance breakdown, per-format quality, operator rank, customer-experience signals.
Snapshot
- Locations
- 12
- Chains
- 3
- lead: Shucks Auto Wash (2)
- Avg rating
- 4.37★
- Damage rate
- 2.6%
- 1.7× MSA norm
- Top format
- detail shop
- 67% of classified
Market Quality snapshot
- Population
- 95,459
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Households
- 40,959
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Residents per wash
- 7,955
- 4.1× 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
- 12 car wash locations operated by 3 chains and 7 independents.
- Detail shop dominates: 66.7% of formally-classified locations.
- Built from 1,980 Google reviews, 501 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
12 car wash locations in Lawrence, KS · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Lawrence's car wash supply is structurally tilted toward detail shop. 66.7% 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: 4.37★ rating, 2.6% damage, 15.9% cancel friction. Staff stands out positively (0.85/+1). 1,980 Google reviews back the analysis, 501 LLM-extracted across 55 dimensions.
See the best-rated car washes in Lawrence, KS
Ranked by Google review rating
About Lawrence, KS
How many car washes are in Lawrence, KS?
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What is the best-rated car wash in Lawrence, KS?
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Which car wash chains operate in Lawrence, KS?
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What is the median household income near Lawrence car washes?
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What is the average car wash rating in Lawrence, KS?
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What kinds of car washes does Lawrence have?
Where most markets have a 2–3 format split, Lawrence runs as a single-format city for car washing. 66.7% of classified locations are detail shop — the other formats appear, but at long-tail volume.
Highest-rated format in this market: Detail Shop at 4.60★ (8 locations). Lowest: Self-Serve Bay at 2.70★ (1 locations).
| Format | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage Rate | Cancel Friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detail Shop | 8 | 66.7% | 611 | 4.60 | 0.00% | 0.0% |
| Express Tunnel | 3 | 25.0% | 1,242 | 4.43 | 4.87% | 16.9% |
| Self-Serve Bay | 1 | 8.3% | 127 | 2.70 | 0.00% | 0.0% |
What is the typical household income near Lawrence car washes?
12 car washes with ≥10 reviews are plotted below against ZIP-level mean AGI. With detail shop carrying 66.7% of classified locations, dot color reads heavily skewed toward a single hue.
Pearson r between ZIP income and rating across 12 qualifying locations: -0.08 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income here. Scatter mean: $80K AGI/return, 4.56★.
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 | 2 | 5 | 841 | 4.46 | Detail Shop (4) |
| $75K – $100K | 2 | 7 | 1,139 | 4.31 | Detail Shop (4) |
| $100K – $150K | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
| $150K+ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
Highest vs. lowest income tier: 0 sites/0.00★ vs. 0 sites/0.00★. Where the dominant format runs 66.7% of classified sites, the per-tier breakdown mostly reflects how that single format ranges across income levels.
Who operates the most Lawrence car washes?
In Lawrence, the chain rank below is closely tied to format dominance — the largest operators tend to be the ones that built out the dominant detail shop at scale. Per-chain quality numbers help separate format-correlated signal from operator-correlated signal.
| # | Chain | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage | Cancel | Upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shucks Auto Wash | 2 | 255 | 4.08 | — | — | — |
| 2 | Club Car Wash | 2 | 753 | 4.45 | 5.56% | 17.0% | 1.67% |
| 3 | Tommy's Express® Car Wash | 1 | 489 | 4.40 | — | — | — |
What do customers love and complain about at Lawrence car washes?
501 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 12 car washes in Lawrence, KS?
Top locations by review count in Lawrence. With 66.7% 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 3900 W 6th St | Lawrence, KS | Express Tunnel | Tommy's Express® Car Wash | 4.4 | 489 | $97K |
| Club Car Wash 1040 E 23rd St | Lawrence, KS | Express Tunnel | Club Car Wash | 4.5 | 414 | $59K |
| Club Car Wash 4850 Bauer Farm Dr | Lawrence, KS | Express Tunnel | Club Car Wash | 4.4 | 339 | $97K |
| Shucks Auto Wash 720 E 23rd St | Lawrence, KS | Detail Shop | Shucks Auto Wash | 3.9 | 214 | $59K |
| Detail On The Go | Detailing, PPF & Ceramic Coating 197 Pinecone Drive | Lawrence, KS | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 128 | $59K |
| Wakarusa Court Car Wash 4900 Wakarusa Ct | Lawrence, KS | Self-Serve Bay | — | 2.7 | 127 | $92K |
| The New Car Image 2421 Via Linda Dr | Lawrence, KS | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 97 | $92K |
| Ad Astra Detailing 3259 Atchison Ave | Lawrence, KS | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 48 | $92K |
| EvelinsAutoCare 901 Delaware St | Lawrence, KS | Detail Shop | — | 4.8 | 44 | $67K |
| Shucks Automotive Detailing 720 E 23rd St | Lawrence, KS | Detail Shop | Shucks Auto Wash | 5.0 | 41 | $59K |
Data as of 2026-05-22. Pick a format and click Copy.
WashIndex. (2026, May 22). Lawrence, KS car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/lawrence-ks
WashIndex. "Lawrence, KS car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified May 22, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/lawrence-ks.
"Lawrence, KS car wash market analysis." WashIndex, May. 22, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/lawrence-ks.
@misc{washindex_car_wash_cities_lawrence_ks_2026,
title = {{Lawrence, KS car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {May},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/lawrence-ks},
urldate = {2026-05-22},
} About this analysis
Car wash inventory for Lawrence, KS is sourced from the WashIndex national car-wash place index, filtered to places whose Google-Maps-reported city matches Lawrence, 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 Lawrence MSA dataset is established by point-in-polygon against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024).
Operating-quality signals are derived from 501 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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