Auburn Car Wash Market Analysis
Auburn-Opelika, AL
Data updated · June 9, 2026
5,127 Google reviews across 80 car washes in 2 Auburn counties. Format mix, operator rank, county breakdown, rating vs. income, aspect-level customer signals.
Snapshot
- Locations
- 80
- 90% independent
- Chains
- 4
- lead: Rich's Car Wash (3 sites)
- Avg rating
- 4.63★
- +0.22 vs national MSA median
- Damage rate
- 0.9%
- 1.8× below national norm
- Cancel friction
- 13.4%
- Top format
- express tunnel
- 60% of classified inventory
Market Quality snapshot
- Population
- 196,614
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Households
- 75,095
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Residents per wash
- 2,458
- 1.3× the national MSA median — lighter supply
- Express tunnels per 10K households
- 0.8
- in the 0.5–1.0 filling band · classified sites
Key findings
- 80 car wash locations operated by 4 chains and 72 independents across 2 counties.
- Weighted Google rating 4.63★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-metro norms.
- Built from 5,127 Google reviews, 1,932 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
80 car wash locations across 2 counties · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Auburn sits near the center of the US-metro distribution on concentration, format mix, and rating. 80 locations across 4 chains and 72 independents, distributed across 2 counties. Distinctive patterns show up below at the format and aspect levels.
Weighted rating 4.63★; damage 0.9%; membership-cancel friction 13.4%. Equipment reliability runs as the sharpest friction (-0.49). 5,127 Google reviews drive the analysis, 1,932 of them processed through the WashIndex LLM extractor.
See the top car wash chains in Auburn
Ranked by location count in the metro
The car wash industry in the Auburn metro, officially
Low-wageCar-wash wages in the Auburn metro run about 100% below the national average ($0 vs. $32,560), across 6 employer establishments and roughly 0 jobs.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, QCEW (private, NAICS 811192). Counts car-wash employer establishments, a narrower universe than all physical wash locations — see methodology.
About the Auburn car wash market
How many car washes are in the Auburn metro?
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What is the best-rated car wash in the Auburn metro?
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Which car wash chain has the most locations in Auburn?
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What is the average customer rating in the Auburn car wash market?
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What is the typical household income near car washes in Auburn?
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What kinds of car washes does Auburn have?
Format counts below split Auburn's 80 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: Detail Shop at 4.98★ across 4 locations. Lowest-rated: Express Tunnel at 4.55★ (6 locations).
| Format | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage Rate | Cancel Friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Express Tunnel | 6 | 7.5% | 3,469 | 4.55 | 1.68% | 14.4% |
| Detail Shop | 4 | 5.0% | 784 | 4.98 | 0.00% | 0.0% |
What is the household income near Auburn car washes?
Read together with the format mix above, the income scatter below tells you whether car wash quality in Auburn tracks neighborhood income, format mix, or neither. Operating quality usually dominates this picture.
Pearson r between ZIP income and Google rating across 22 qualifying locations: -0.05 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income. Scatter mean: $71K AGI/return, 4.45★.
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 | 2 | 3 | 187 | 4.22 | — |
| $50K – $75K | 5 | 24 | 2,522 | 4.63 | Detail Shop (4) |
| $75K – $100K | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5.00 | — |
| $100K – $150K | 2 | 10 | 2,019 | 4.61 | Express Tunnel (2) |
| $150K+ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
Income band spread: 0/0.00★ at the highest tier; 3/4.22★ 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 Auburn car washes?
The table below ranks the top 25 chains operating in Auburn by location count. Each row shows per-chain Google rating, damage rate, and cancel friction — the cleanest side-by-side cut on operator quality in the market.
| # | Chain | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage | Cancel | Upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rich's Car Wash | 3 | 804 | 4.44 | 6.50% | — | 0.81% |
| 2 | Take 5 Car Wash | 2 | 2,471 | 4.60 | 0.40% | 10.4% | 0.13% |
| 3 | Circle K | 2 | 51 | 3.35 | — | — | — |
| 4 | Kiwi Car Wash | 1 | 194 | 4.30 | 4.62% | — | 0.00% |
Which counties have the most car washes in Auburn?
The table below splits the metro's car wash inventory across the 2 counties of the Auburn-Opelika, AL CBSA, with location count, total reviews, and weighted-average rating per county.
Cross-county rating dispersion: 0.42★ between the highest- and lowest-rated counties with meaningful sample size.
| County | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lee County | 77 | 96.3% | 4,940 | 4.64 |
| Macon County | 4 | 5.0% | 187 | 4.22 |
What do customers love and complain about in Auburn?
Seven aspects, 1,932 reviews, 80 locations. The grid below gives a quick read on which dimensions of the experience Auburn's car wash market does well at and which generate friction.
Where are all the car washes in the Auburn metro?
80 car washes are tracked in Auburn; below is the top of the list by Google review count. Locations with fewer than 10 reviews are excluded from the rating column.
| Location | City | Format | Chain | Rating | Reviews | ZIP AGI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GooGoo Car Wash 2338 Bent Creek Rd | Auburn, AL | Express Tunnel | Take 5 Car Wash | 4.6 | 1,297 | $112K |
| GooGoo Car Wash 1672 S College St | Auburn, AL | Express Tunnel | Take 5 Car Wash | 4.6 | 1,174 | $64K |
| Rich's Car Wash - Opelika 1531 2nd Ave | Opelika, AL | Express Tunnel | Rich's Car Wash | 4.5 | 406 | $67K |
| Rich's Car Wash - Auburn 2415 E University Dr | Auburn, AL | Express Tunnel | Rich's Car Wash | 4.4 | 387 | $112K |
| DETAILY Mobile Car Detailing Auburn Alabama 555 Stage Rd | Auburn, AL | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 294 | $112K |
| Kiwi Car Wash Gateway 2015 Gateway Dr | Opelika, AL | Express Tunnel | Kiwi Car Wash | 4.3 | 194 | $67K |
| Clean Auto Detailers LLC 1948 Legacy Cir | Opelika, AL | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 172 | $67K |
| H&H Truck and Trailer Wash 227 AL-186 | Tuskegee, AL | — | — | 4.2 | 154 | $40K |
| My Awesome Detailer, LLC 2709 Frederick Rd | Opelika, AL | Detail Shop | — | 4.9 | 126 | $67K |
| Jose’s Mobile Detail | , AL | — | — | 5.0 | 78 | — |
| Auburn Suds Mobile Detailing | , AL | — | — | 5.0 | 74 | — |
| Pro Car Care 1720 Pepperell Pkwy | Opelika, AL | — | — | 4.6 | 48 | $67K |
| Pearson Auto Detailing 1502 Terrace Ct | Opelika, AL | — | — | 4.9 | 44 | $67K |
| Squeaky Clean Mobile Detailing | , AL | — | — | 5.0 | 36 | — |
| H&J Auto Spa Detailing, Ceramic Coating, Tinting & Mobile 575 Sunwood Dr | Smiths Station, AL | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 33 | $68K |
| Auburn Shine Detailing | , AL | — | — | 5.0 | 31 | — |
| Tombstone mobile detailing 591 Lee Rd 38 | Opelika, AL | — | — | 5.0 | 30 | $63K |
| 1st Choice Detailing LLC 1545 Lee Rd 379 | Smiths Station, AL | — | — | 5.0 | 28 | $68K |
| Circle K 804 E Glenn Ave | Auburn, AL | — | Circle K | 3.4 | 28 | $112K |
| Alabama Auto Coatings | , AL | — | — | 4.8 | 24 | — |
| Dent Kingz LLC 9994 Lee County Rd 240 | Phenix City, AL | — | — | 5.0 | 24 | $55K |
| Circle K 511 2nd Ave | Opelika, AL | — | Circle K | 3.3 | 23 | $67K |
| XxclusiveDetailing | , AL | — | — | 5.0 | 20 | — |
| Shiny Wheels N More | , AL | — | — | 5.0 | 19 | — |
| Tidy Tigers Mobile Detailing | , AL | — | — | 5.0 | 19 | — |
Compare Auburn to other AL car wash markets
Each link drills into a full per-metro analysis — operator concentration, format mix, and customer-experience signals against the same methodology.
Data as of 2026-06-09. Pick a format and click Copy.
WashIndex. (2026, June 9). Auburn car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/auburn
WashIndex. "Auburn car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified June 9, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/auburn.
"Auburn car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Jun. 9, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/auburn.
@misc{washindex_car_wash_markets_auburn_2026,
title = {{Auburn car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {Jun},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/auburn},
urldate = {2026-06-09},
} About this analysis
Car wash inventory for the Auburn-Opelika, AL CBSA is determined by point-in-polygon test against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024) for the 2 counties that make up the MSA. Each location was verified to fall inside one of those county polygons; lat/lng comes from Google Maps metadata.
Operating-quality signals are derived from 1,932 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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