Long Beach, CA Car Wash Market Analysis
Part of the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA MSA.
Data updated · June 9, 2026
4,117 Google reviews across 20 car washes in Long Beach. Format mix, operator rank, county breakdown, rating vs. income, aspect-level customer signals.
Snapshot
- Locations
- 20
- Chains
- 4
- lead: Circle K (3)
- Avg rating
- 4.31★
- -0.10 vs MSA median
- Damage rate
- 3.5%
- 2.2× MSA norm
- Top format
- detail shop
- 40% of classified
- Median single wash
- $15
- range $4–$50
- Median unlimited
- $27.95/mo
- cheapest $17.76/mo at Circle Marina Speedwash
Market Quality snapshot
- Population
- 566,230
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Households
- 206,538
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Residents per wash
- 28,312
- 14.6× the national MSA median — lighter supply
- Express tunnels per 10K households
- 0.2
- below the ~0.5 expandable band · classified sites
Key findings
- 20 car wash locations operated by 4 chains and 13 independents.
- Weighted Google rating 4.31★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-market norms.
- Built from 4,117 Google reviews, 682 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
20 car wash locations in Long Beach, CA · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Long Beach sits near the center of the US-market distribution on concentration, format mix, and rating. 20 locations across 4 chains and 13 independents. Distinctive patterns show up below at the format and aspect levels.
Headline numbers sit near US-market norms: rating 4.31★, damage 3.5%, cancel friction 21.4%. Facility cleanliness strong (0.94); equipment reliability weak (-0.23). 4,117 Google reviews drive the analysis, 682 of them processed through the WashIndex LLM extractor.
Published pricing across the 7 of 21 Long Beach locations with menus available: median single car wash $15 (range $4–$50), median unlimited membership $27.95/month (range $17.76–$29/mo). The cheapest unlimited membership in the city is $17.76/mo at Circle Marina Speedwash (Wheel Blaster).
See the best-rated car washes in Long Beach, CA
Ranked by Google review rating
What does a car wash cost in Long Beach, CA?
Published menu pricing for car washes in Long Beach, captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent. 7 of 21 tracked locations in the city have usable published pricing (33% coverage).
| Cheapest unlimited memberships in Long Beach | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Circle Marina Speedwash Wheel Blaster | $17.76/mo |
| 2 | Gateway Express Car Wash Includes Economy Class | $27.95/mo |
| 3 | Spot Free Car Wash Works | $29/mo |
| Cheapest single car washes in Long Beach | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bixby Knolls Car Wash Large Vehicle Extra | $4 |
| 2 | Spot Free Car Wash Deluxe | $12 |
| 3 | Gateway Express Car Wash Includes Economy Class | $13 |
| 4 | Beach City Auto Detail & Tint A La Carte - Interior Dressing (low) | $15 |
| 5 | Naples Island Car Wash & Detail Wash #2: Luxury Wash | $41 |
Pricing scraped from operator websites where published; the WashIndex AI calling agent rings up locations that don’t publish menus online to capture pricing directly.
Car wash financing in Long Beach, CA
Since 2010, the U.S. Small Business Administration has backed 5 car-wash loans in Long Beach, CA worth $7.5M, at a median of $1,443,000 per car wash. About 60% funded brand-new or startup car washes.
FY2026 annualized from its first 6 months.
- New build / open60% · $1.4M
- Expansion / improvement40% · $1.2M
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 Long Beach, CA
How many car washes are in Long Beach, CA?
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What is the best-rated car wash in Long Beach, CA?
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Which car wash chains operate in Long Beach, CA?
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What is the median household income near Long Beach car washes?
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What is the average car wash rating in Long Beach, CA?
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How much does a car wash cost in Long Beach, CA?
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How much does an unlimited car wash membership cost in Long Beach, CA?
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What is the cheapest car wash in Long Beach, CA?
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What kinds of car washes does Long Beach have?
Format counts below split Long Beach's 20 car wash locations by operating concept. Each format serves a different customer occasion — express tunnels for throughput, full-service for staffed convenience, detail shops for hand-finished work — and the rating column lets you read whether each format is meeting its own expectations here.
Highest-rated format in this market: Detail Shop at 4.66★ (8 locations). Lowest: In-Bay Automatic at 3.80★ (5 locations).
| Format | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage Rate | Cancel Friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detail Shop | 8 | 40.0% | 812 | 4.66 | 0.34% | 0.0% |
| Express Tunnel | 5 | 25.0% | 2,293 | 4.39 | 7.19% | 22.7% |
| In-Bay Automatic | 5 | 25.0% | 221 | 3.80 | 0.00% | — |
| Full Service | 2 | 10.0% | 791 | 3.87 | 1.56% | 0.0% |
What is the typical household income near Long Beach car washes?
20 Long Beach car washes with at least 10 Google reviews are plotted below against the mean IRS AGI per return for their ZIP. The Pearson correlation we compute is one of the cleanest cuts on whether neighborhood income meaningfully shapes wash quality here.
Pearson r between ZIP income and rating across 20 qualifying locations: -0.42 — mild negative. Higher-income ZIPs host slightly lower-rated washes on average, which is unusual. Scatter mean: $101K AGI/return, 4.20★.
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 | 1 | 1 | 358 | 4.40 | Express Tunnel (1) |
| $50K – $75K | 4 | 9 | 1,398 | 4.40 | Detail Shop (6) |
| $75K – $100K | 1 | 1 | 218 | 4.70 | Detail Shop (1) |
| $100K – $150K | 3 | 5 | 1,949 | 4.22 | Express Tunnel (2) |
| $150K+ | 1 | 5 | 194 | 4.01 | In-Bay Automatic (2) |
Income band spread: 5/4.01★ at the highest tier; 1/4.40★ at the lowest. In a balanced market, the per-tier read is most useful as a sanity check on whether the operating quality is income-uniform or income-stratified.
Who operates the most Long Beach car washes?
4 chains alongside 13 independents make up Long Beach's car wash supply. The chain rank below shows the multi-location operators' position; the per-location detail near the bottom of the page captures the independent layer.
| # | Chain | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage | Cancel | Upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Circle K | 3 | 42 | 3.20 | — | — | — |
| 2 | 76 | 2 | 179 | 3.94 | — | — | — |
| 3 | Roscoe Speedwash | 1 | 724 | 4.40 | 4.42% | 19.6% | 0.00% |
| 4 | Spot Free Car Wash | 1 | 16 | 3.10 | — | — | — |
What do customers love and complain about at Long Beach car washes?
The aspect grid below summarizes 682 AI-extracted reviews across 20 Long Beach car wash locations. Each aspect lands on a -1…+1 scale (negative = customers complain more than they praise; positive = the reverse).
Where are the 20 car washes in Long Beach, CA?
Top 10 car washes by review volume in Long Beach. The full set of 20 is available in the underlying dataset.
| Location | City | Format | Chain | Rating | Reviews | ZIP AGI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gateway Express Car Wash 4141 E Willow St | Long Beach, CA | Express Tunnel | — | 4.4 | 1,050 | $132K |
| Circle Marina Speedwash 4800 CA-1 | Long Beach, CA | Express Tunnel | Roscoe Speedwash | 4.4 | 724 | $59K |
| Bixby Knolls Car Wash 577 E Wardlow Rd | Long Beach, CA | Full Service | — | 3.9 | 705 | $105K |
| Pacific Express Wash 130 W Anaheim St | Long Beach, CA | Express Tunnel | — | 4.4 | 358 | $42K |
| Beach City Auto Detail & Tint 210 Alamitos Ave | Long Beach, CA | Detail Shop | — | 4.7 | 218 | $81K |
| Willow Car Wash 1392 W Willow St | Long Beach, CA | Detail Shop | — | 4.2 | 201 | $55K |
| Surf N' Shine Express Car Wash 7685 E Carson St | Long Beach, CA | Express Tunnel | — | 4.4 | 145 | $118K |
| 76 5170 Long Beach Blvd | Long Beach, CA | In-Bay Automatic | 76 | 3.9 | 102 | $50K |
| JPR Mobile Detailing 1178 E 21st St | Long Beach, CA | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 101 | $57K |
| Naples Island Car Wash & Detail 5790 2nd St | Long Beach, CA | Full Service | — | 3.6 | 86 | $170K |
Compare Long Beach to other car wash markets in the Los Angeles 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). Long Beach, CA car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/long-beach-ca
WashIndex. "Long Beach, CA car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified June 9, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/long-beach-ca.
"Long Beach, CA car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Jun. 9, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/long-beach-ca.
@misc{washindex_car_wash_cities_long_beach_ca_2026,
title = {{Long Beach, CA car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {Jun},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-cities/long-beach-ca},
urldate = {2026-06-09},
} About this analysis
Car wash inventory for Long Beach, CA is sourced from the WashIndex national car-wash place index, filtered to places whose Google-Maps-reported city matches Long Beach, 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 Los Angeles MSA dataset is established by point-in-polygon against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024).
Operating-quality signals are derived from 682 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.
Machine-readable: JSON ↓ · API root
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