Market Analysis · CBSA 19100

Dallas-Fort Worth Car Wash Market Analysis

Name: Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Car Wash Market Dataset
Creator: WashIndex
License: https://washindex.com/terms

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX

Data updated · September 26, 2026

A read of Dallas-Fort Worth's car wash market built from 631,524 Google reviews across 4,719 locations. Format mix, operator rank, county breakdown, rating vs. income, aspect-level customer signals.

Snapshot

Locations: 4,719; 90% independent
Chains: 95; lead: Shell (63 sites)
Avg rating: 4.52★; +0.11 vs national MSA median
Damage rate: 1.4%; near national MSA norm
Cancel friction: 14.4%
Top format: detail shop; 41% of classified inventory
Median single wash: $11; range $5–$50
Median unlimited: $22.99/mo; cheapest $10/mo at Car Spa Car Wash, Detail, & Oil Change

Market Quality snapshot

Population: 7,807,555; ACS 2023 5-year
Households: 2,825,878; ACS 2023 5-year
Residents per wash: 1,654; near the national MSA median
Express tunnels per 10K households: 1.1; above ~1.0 — contested · classified sites

Key findings

4,719 car wash locations operated by 95 chains and 4,245 independents across 13 counties.
Weighted Google rating 4.52★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-metro norms.
Built from 631,524 Google reviews, 244,375 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.

4,719 car wash locations across 13 counties · dots colored by format · sized by review volume

Locations

4,719

Chains

+ 4,245 independents

Reviews

632K

Avg Rating

4.52

Damage Rate

1.38%

Median AGI/return

$80K

location-weighted

Executive Read

Dallas-Fort Worth sits near the center of the US-metro distribution on concentration, format mix, and rating. 4,719 locations across 95 chains and 4,245 independents, distributed across 13 counties. Customer-experience signals across 244,375 AI-extracted reviews produce the distinct read on this market.

Headline numbers sit near US-metro norms: rating 4.52★, damage 1.4%, cancel friction 14.4%. Equipment reliability runs as the sharpest friction (-0.32). 631,524 Google reviews drive the analysis, 244,375 of them processed through the WashIndex LLM extractor.

Published pricing across the 359 of 4773 Dallas-Fort Worth locations with menus available: median single car wash $11 (range $5–$50), median unlimited membership $22.99/month (range $10–$100/mo). The cheapest unlimited membership in the metro is $10/mo at Car Spa Car Wash, Detail, & Oil Change (Unlimited Bronze Exterior).

Top operators

See the top car wash chains in Dallas-Fort Worth

Ranked by location count in the metro

→

$$ Pricing

What does a car wash cost in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro?

Published menu pricing for car washes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent. 359 of 4773 tracked locations have usable published pricing (8% coverage).

Single Wash

$11

median · range $5–$50 · 272 locations tracked

Unlimited Membership

$22.99 per month

median · range $10–$100 per month · 280 programs tracked

Cheapest unlimited memberships in Dallas-Fort Worth
1	Car Spa Car Wash, Detail, & Oil Change Unlimited Bronze Exterior	$10 per mo
2	Duarte Auto Detail Everything in Entrepreneur Plan +	$10 per mo
3	Car Wash & Oil Change A LA CARTE	$10 per mo
4	Feel Great Car Wash - Cockrell Hill Basic	$11 per mo
5	Clean Freak Car Wash, Prosper, TX CLASSIC	$11 per mo

Cheapest single car washes in Dallas-Fort Worth
1	Star Express Car Wash Star Express Car Wash (Fundraiser Cost)	$5
2	M2 Luxuries - Detail Spa & Hand Wash (Irving - Las Colinas) by appt. only Sale Price	$6
3	Katies Express Car Wash Basic	$6
4	Rizz & Shine Auto Spa and Detailing (Mobile Service Available) Starter	$6
5	Out The Mud Services Starter	$6

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.

Official industry footprint · BLS QCEW 2024

The car wash industry in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, officially

Major market

the Dallas-Fort Worth metro is one of the country's largest car-wash job markets — 473 employer establishments and about 5,805 jobs at a $32,202 average annual wage.

Employer establishments

473

NAICS 811192 · 2024

Industry jobs

5,805

private, annual avg

Avg annual wage

$32,202

per employee

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.

SBA Lending · FY2010–present

Car wash financing in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro

Consolidating market

Since 2010, the U.S. Small Business Administration has backed 317 car-wash loans in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro worth $648M, at a $1,833,000 median per car wash and a 1.1% charge-off rate. Acquisitions are unusually prominent — 15% of loans went to buying existing washes (vs. 8% nationally), a sign operators are trading sites more than building new ones.

SBA loans

317

FY2010–2026

Total approved

$648M

7(a) + 504

Median loan

$1.8M

per car wash

Charge-off rate

1.1%

of 187 resolved

SBA car-wash loans approved per fiscal year

FY2026 annualized from its first 6 months.

Loans by county

Tarrant 105
Dallas 76
Collin 54
Denton 45
Ellis 9
Rockwall 8

What the loans fund · estimated from loan terms

New build / open34% · $2.0M
Acquisition15% · $3.1M
Expansion / improvement46% · $1.4M
Working capital3% · $20K
Unclassified1% · $125K

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

About the Dallas-Fort Worth car wash market

How many car washes are in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro?

There are 4,719 car wash locations across the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX CBSA, spanning 13 counties.

What is the best-rated car wash in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro?

ClearWater Express Wash in Burleson, TX is the highest-rated car wash in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro at 5.0★ across 4,472 Google reviews (filtering to locations with at least 100 reviews).

Which car wash chain has the most locations in Dallas-Fort Worth?

Shell has the most locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro with 63 sites, followed by Carnation Auto Spa (23 sites). The metro has 95 multi-location operators in total, alongside 4,245 independent or single-location sites.

What is the average customer rating in the Dallas-Fort Worth car wash market?

The review-weighted average rating across all 4,719 car washes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro is 4.52★, based on 631,524 Google reviews processed through WashIndex's customer-experience pipeline.

What is the typical household income near car washes in Dallas-Fort Worth?

Across the ZIP codes containing the Dallas-Fort Worth metro's car washes, the location-weighted median IRS-reported AGI per tax return is $80K (tax year 2022) — a rough proxy for trade-area household income.

How much does a car wash cost in Dallas-Fort Worth?

Single-wash prices across the Dallas-Fort Worth car wash market range from $5 to $50, with a median of $11 across 272 locations that publish their pricing. The cheapest single car wash in the metro is $5 at Star Express Car Wash (Star Express Car Wash (Fundraiser Cost)). Pricing data is captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent.

How much does an unlimited car wash membership cost in Dallas-Fort Worth?

Unlimited car wash memberships in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro range from $10/month to $100/month, with a median of $22.99/month across 280 programs tracked. The cheapest unlimited membership is $10/month at Car Spa Car Wash, Detail, & Oil Change (Unlimited Bronze Exterior); the most expensive tracked is $100/month at Aron's Mobile Detailing (Our "Essential Detail" Service).

What is the cheapest car wash in Dallas-Fort Worth?

The cheapest single car wash in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro is $5 at Star Express Car Wash (Star Express Car Wash (Fundraiser Cost) tier). For ongoing customers, the cheapest unlimited membership is $10/month at Car Spa Car Wash, Detail, & Oil Change (Unlimited Bronze Exterior) — a break-even of roughly 0.9 washes per month at the metro's median single-wash price of $11.

01 Format Mix

What kinds of car washes does Dallas-Fort Worth have?

Format counts below split Dallas-Fort Worth's 4,719 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 4.87★ across 305 locations. Lowest-rated: In-Bay Automatic at 3.71★ (6 locations).

3,976 (84.3%) of 4,719 locations are unclassified — small independents whose websites don't surface enough signal for format assignment. Format-level statistics describe the classified subset only.

Format	Locations	% of MSA	Reviews	Avg Rating	Damage Rate	Cancel Friction
Unclassified	3,976	84.3%	137,999	4.33	1.03%	8.8%
Detail Shop	305	6.5%	26,447	4.87	0.41%	0.0%
Express Tunnel	303	6.4%	381,547	4.62	1.44%	14.2%
Full Service	108	2.3%	81,657	4.31	1.99%	18.3%
Self-Serve Bay	21	0.4%	3,182	3.75	1.61%	12.5%
In-Bay Automatic	6	0.1%	692	3.71	2.20%	28.6%

02 Income & Demographics

What is the household income near Dallas-Fort Worth car washes?

Each ZIP in Dallas-Fort Worth is joined to IRS Statistics-of-Income (tax year 2022) and to the per-location Google rating dataset. The scatter below sizes dots by review volume and colors them by format.

Pearson r between ZIP income and Google rating across 1,445 qualifying locations: 0.09 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income. Scatter mean: $105K AGI/return, 4.27★.

Detail Shop Express Tunnel Full Service Self-Serve Bay In-Bay Automatic

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	40	382	80,307	4.49	Express Tunnel (41)
$50K – $75K	71	622	159,385	4.52	Express Tunnel (82)
$75K – $100K	52	539	153,021	4.56	Express Tunnel (84)
$100K – $150K	41	408	110,279	4.42	Detail Shop (59)
$150K+	36	355	101,825	4.51	Detail Shop (76)

Income band spread: 355/4.51★ at the highest tier; 382/4.49★ 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.

03 Dominant Chains

Who operates the most Dallas-Fort Worth car washes?

The table below ranks the top 25 chains operating in Dallas-Fort Worth 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	Shell	63	3,047	3.36	0.71%	—	0.00%
2	Carnation Auto Spa	23	24,259	4.56	1.24%	19.1%	0.80%
3	Zips Car Wash	22	29,593	4.31	2.37%	16.0%	1.26%
4	Take 5 Car Wash	22	59,490	4.59	1.22%	19.5%	1.39%
5	WhiteWater Express Car Wash	22	60,284	4.75	0.62%	7.2%	0.23%
6	Wash Masters Car Wash	19	26,115	4.75	1.60%	17.2%	0.63%
7	Super Star Car Wash	19	33,627	4.51	1.85%	14.1%	1.62%
8	Club Car Wash	17	2,870	4.38	6.02%	16.4%	1.91%
9	Circle K	17	667	3.29	2.03%	—	1.35%
10	Caliber Car Wash	16	33,147	4.75	1.41%	15.1%	0.36%
11	H-E-B Fuel	11	1,122	4.48	1.90%	—	0.47%
12	WASHGUYS Car Wash	9	9,821	4.50	1.52%	22.9%	0.97%
13	Fuel City Car Wash	8	11,469	4.19	2.02%	—	0.09%
14	CAR•TOYS	8	8,255	4.41	1.36%	—	1.12%
15	Quick Quack Car Wash	7	8,234	4.87	0.86%	8.5%	0.76%
16	Tommy's Express® Car Wash	6	3,607	4.52	2.61%	7.7%	0.50%
17	ClearWater Express Wash	6	12,148	4.94	0.55%	3.7%	0.15%
18	Feel Great Car Wash	6	7,155	4.92	0.51%	5.9%	0.14%
19	Carmel Car Wash	5	2,671	3.75	6.54%	6.7%	7.52%
20	Blue Shark Car Wash - Allen	5	2,886	4.12	1.67%	19.6%	0.98%
21	Raceway Express Car Wash	5	1,754	4.10	5.33%	27.0%	2.33%
22	Slappy's Express Car Wash - Presidio	5	1,747	4.61	3.66%	20.8%	0.47%
23	Snap Clean Car Wash	5	1,923	4.42	3.01%	15.1%	0.35%
24	Cowboy Express Car Wash	5	3,772	4.90	0.98%	9.4%	0.42%
25	Blue Beacon	5	4,777	4.11	1.86%	—	0.70%

04 County Breakdown

Which counties have the most car washes in Dallas-Fort Worth?

Dallas-Fort Worth's 4,719 car washes distribute across 13 counties. Dallas County leads with 2,099 locations (44.5%). Cross-county rating dispersion is usually narrow at this scale.

Cross-county rating dispersion: 0.45★ between the highest- and lowest-rated counties with meaningful sample size.

County	Locations	% of MSA	Reviews	Avg Rating
Dallas County	2,099	44.5%	189,287	4.50
Tarrant County	1,012	21.4%	201,487	4.56
Collin County	573	12.1%	103,858	4.50
Denton County	457	9.7%	69,553	4.48
Ellis County	114	2.4%	14,886	4.53
Johnson County	94	2.0%	15,320	4.65
Parker County	92	1.9%	13,529	4.61
Kaufman County	72	1.5%	6,993	4.59
Rockwall County	67	1.4%	8,058	4.33
Hunt County	57	1.2%	3,290	4.25
Wise County	39	0.8%	1,670	4.40
Hood County	39	0.8%	3,336	4.45
Somervell County	4	0.1%	257	4.21

05 Customer Experience Signals

What do customers love and complain about in Dallas-Fort Worth?

The aspect grid below summarizes 244,375 AI-extracted reviews across 4,719 Dallas-Fort Worth car wash locations. Each aspect lands on a -1…+1 scale (negative = customers complain more than they praise; positive = the reverse).

Staff +0.87

Facility Cleanliness +0.75

Wash Quality +0.73

Wait Time +0.61

Per-Wash Price +0.25

Membership Value +0.12

Equipment Working -0.32

06 All Locations

Where are all the car washes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro?

4,719 car washes are tracked in Dallas-Fort Worth; 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
Mercedes Benz of Plano 6455 Dallas Pkwy	Plano, TX	—	—	4.6	10,455	$201K
WhiteWater Express Car Wash 8917 Lower Sonoma Ln	Fort Worth, TX	Express Tunnel	WhiteWater Express Car Wash	4.9	5,619	$81K
Take 5 Car Wash 3949 S Belt Line Rd	Grand Prairie, TX	Express Tunnel	Take 5 Car Wash	4.7	5,573	$61K
Take 5 Car Wash 1900 W University Dr	Denton, TX	Express Tunnel	Take 5 Car Wash	4.5	5,275	$48K
Sewell BMW of Plano 6800 Dallas Pkwy	Plano, TX	—	—	4.5	4,852	$201K
Fuel City Mesquite 2175 S Town E Blvd	Mesquite, TX	Express Tunnel	Fuel City Car Wash	4.2	4,609	$48K
Fuel City Haltom City 1715 Haltom Rd	Haltom City, TX	Express Tunnel	Fuel City Car Wash	4.3	4,594	$48K
Wash Masters - Waxahachie 2931 N Hwy 77	Waxahachie, TX	Express Tunnel	Wash Masters Car Wash	4.9	4,590	$76K
Super Star Car Wash - Belt Line Rd & Hwy 161 4801 N Belt Line Rd	Irving, TX	Express Tunnel	Super Star Car Wash	4.3	4,512	$113K
ClearWater Express Wash 279 NW John Jones Dr	Burleson, TX	Express Tunnel	ClearWater Express Wash	5.0	4,472	$89K
Trademark Car Wash 1511 Town E Blvd	Mesquite, TX	Express Tunnel	Trademark Car Wash	4.7	4,400	$47K
Caliber Car Wash - Basswood 3180 Basswood Blvd	Fort Worth, TX	Express Tunnel	Caliber Car Wash	4.9	4,087	$70K
Caliber Car Wash 3251 Golden Triangle Blvd	Fort Worth, TX	Express Tunnel	Caliber Car Wash	4.8	4,048	$81K
WhiteWater Express Car Wash 1998 E Main St	Crowley, TX	Express Tunnel	WhiteWater Express Car Wash	4.8	3,940	$71K
WhiteWater Express Car Wash 6425 Camp Bowie Blvd	Fort Worth, TX	Express Tunnel	WhiteWater Express Car Wash	4.9	3,904	$86K
Trademark Car Wash 1007 W McDermott Dr	Allen, TX	Express Tunnel	Trademark Car Wash	4.7	3,901	$178K
Take 5 Car Wash 1912 S Cooper St	Arlington, TX	Express Tunnel	Take 5 Car Wash	4.7	3,879	$75K
WhiteWater Express Car Wash 4784 Golden Triangle Blvd	Fort Worth, TX	Express Tunnel	WhiteWater Express Car Wash	4.7	3,839	$92K
Take 5 Car Wash 204 East Belt Line Rd	Cedar Hill, TX	Express Tunnel	Take 5 Car Wash	4.7	3,713	$73K
WhiteWater Express Car Wash 5521 S Cooper St	Arlington, TX	Express Tunnel	WhiteWater Express Car Wash	4.8	3,640	$82K
WhiteWater Express Car Wash 3331 Arapaho Rd	Garland, TX	Express Tunnel	WhiteWater Express Car Wash	4.7	3,598	$76K
Take 5 Car Wash 4200 Boat Club Rd	Fort Worth, TX	Express Tunnel	Take 5 Car Wash	4.5	3,595	$75K
WhiteWater Express Car Wash 2817 Basswood Blvd	Fort Worth, TX	Express Tunnel	WhiteWater Express Car Wash	4.8	3,564	$75K
WhiteWater Express Car Wash 788 Keller Pkwy	Keller, TX	Express Tunnel	—	4.9	3,548	$168K
Take 5 Car Wash 1017 N Saginaw Blvd	Saginaw, TX	Express Tunnel	Take 5 Car Wash	4.6	3,538	$88K

Nearby Other TX metros

Compare Dallas-Fort Worth to other TX car wash markets

Each link drills into a full per-metro analysis — operator concentration, format mix, and customer-experience signals against the same methodology.

Houston 4,395 San Antonio 1,630 Austin 1,480 El Paso 476 McAllen 423 Killeen 312

Cite this page

Data as of 2026-09-26. Pick a format and click Copy.

APA

WashIndex. (2026, September 26). Dallas-Fort Worth car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/dallas-fort-worth

Chicago

WashIndex. "Dallas-Fort Worth car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified September 26, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/dallas-fort-worth.

MLA

"Dallas-Fort Worth car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Sep. 26, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/dallas-fort-worth.

BibTeX

@misc{washindex_car_wash_markets_dallas_fort_worth_2026,
  title  = {{Dallas-Fort Worth car wash market analysis}},
  author = {{WashIndex}},
  year   = {2026},
  month  = {Sep},
  url    = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/dallas-fort-worth},
  urldate = {2026-09-26},
}

About this analysis

Car wash inventory for the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX CBSA is determined by point-in-polygon test against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024) for the 13 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 244,375 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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