Houma Car Wash Market Analysis
Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA
Data updated · June 9, 2026
2,225 Google reviews across 94 car washes in 2 Houma counties. Format mix, operator rank, county breakdown, rating vs. income, aspect-level customer signals.
Snapshot
- Locations
- 94
- 91% independent
- Chains
- 3
- lead: Auto Spa (6 sites)
- Avg rating
- 4.40★
- near national MSA median
- Damage rate
- 1.2%
- 1.3× below national norm
- Cancel friction
- 0.0%
- Top format
- express tunnel
- 64% of classified inventory
Market Quality snapshot
- Population
- 204,032
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Households
- 79,238
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Residents per wash
- 2,171
- near the national MSA median
- Express tunnels per 10K households
- 0.9
- in the 0.5–1.0 filling band · classified sites
Key findings
- 94 car wash locations operated by 3 chains and 86 independents across 2 counties.
- Weighted Google rating 4.40★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-metro norms.
- Built from 2,225 Google reviews, 481 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
94 car wash locations across 2 counties · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Houma's car wash market reads as US-metro-typical in shape; the distinctive cuts are at the format and aspect levels. 94 locations across 3 chains and 86 independents, distributed across 2 counties. Customer-experience signals across 481 AI-extracted reviews produce the distinct read on this market.
Headline numbers sit near US-metro norms: rating 4.40★, damage 1.2%, cancel friction 0.0%. Staff strong (0.85); equipment reliability weak (-0.57). Per-operator and per-format cuts below are more informative than the aggregates.
See the top car wash chains in Houma
Ranked by location count in the metro
The car wash industry in the Houma metro, officially
Low-wageCar-wash wages in the Houma metro run about 100% below the national average ($0 vs. $32,560), across 5 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 Houma car wash market
How many car washes are in the Houma metro?
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What is the best-rated car wash in the Houma metro?
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Which car wash chain has the most locations in Houma?
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What is the average customer rating in the Houma car wash market?
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What is the typical household income near car washes in Houma?
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What kinds of car washes does Houma have?
Format counts below split Houma's 94 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 4.90★ across 4 locations. Lowest-rated: Express Tunnel at 4.38★ (7 locations).
| Format | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage Rate | Cancel Friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Express Tunnel | 7 | 7.4% | 865 | 4.38 | 1.37% | 0.0% |
| Detail Shop | 4 | 4.3% | 237 | 4.90 | 0.95% | 0.0% |
What is the household income near Houma car washes?
Each ZIP in Houma 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 28 qualifying locations: 0.09 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income. Scatter mean: $78K AGI/return, 4.17★.
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 | 9 | 510 | 4.36 | Express Tunnel (1) |
| $50K – $75K | 8 | 21 | 135 | 3.98 | Detail Shop (1) |
| $75K – $100K | 2 | 17 | 599 | 4.60 | Express Tunnel (3) |
| $100K – $150K | 1 | 16 | 716 | 4.27 | Express Tunnel (3) |
| $150K+ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
Top-tier 0 sites, 0.00★ avg; bottom-tier 9 sites, 4.36★. Across Houma's 28 qualifying locations, the income gradient correlates only weakly with rating — operator execution dominates.
Who operates the most Houma car washes?
3 chains run sites in Houma; the top 25 are listed below by location count, with their per-chain operating-quality numbers next to them. Useful for narrowing competitive-set considerations or for M&A evaluation.
| # | Chain | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage | Cancel | Upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Auto Spa | 6 | 796 | 4.37 | — | — | — |
| 2 | Shell | 1 | 14 | 4.20 | — | — | — |
| 3 | Phillips 66 | 1 | 40 | 4.50 | — | — | — |
Which counties have the most car washes in Houma?
Counties of the Houma CBSA are listed below by car wash count. Terrebonne County is the most density-concentrated. Reading the rating column tells you whether quality is uniform across the metro or whether specific counties pull in either direction.
Cross-county rating dispersion: 0.18★ between the highest- and lowest-rated counties with meaningful sample size.
| County | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terrebonne County | 50 | 53.2% | 1,323 | 4.33 |
| Lafourche County | 45 | 47.9% | 902 | 4.51 |
What do customers love and complain about in Houma?
The aspect grid below summarizes 481 AI-extracted reviews across 94 Houma car wash locations. Each aspect lands on a -1…+1 scale (negative = customers complain more than they praise; positive = the reverse).
Where are all the car washes in the Houma metro?
The complete inventory of car wash locations in the Houma MSA is captured in the underlying dataset; the table below shows the highest-review-volume sites for at-a-glance comparison. Each row shows operator, address, format, chain affiliation, rating, review count, and the IRS mean AGI for the ZIP.
| Location | City | Format | Chain | Rating | Reviews | ZIP AGI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auto Spa Express 637 Grand Caillou Rd | Houma, LA | Express Tunnel | Auto Spa | 4.4 | 309 | $44K |
| Auto Spa Express 1846 Martin Luther King Blvd | Houma, LA | Express Tunnel | Auto Spa | 4.3 | 220 | $100K |
| M&M AUTO DETAILING 579 Waverly Rd | Thibodaux, LA | Detail Shop | — | 4.9 | 143 | $83K |
| Auto Spa 1600 Canal Blvd | Thibodaux, LA | Express Tunnel | Auto Spa | 4.4 | 130 | $83K |
| Blue Marlin Car Wash 103 N Hollywood Rd | Houma, LA | — | — | 4.1 | 122 | $100K |
| Splash Car Wash 1372 Grand Caillou Rd | Houma, LA | — | — | 4.0 | 92 | $44K |
| Blue Marlin Car Wash 1905 Martin Luther King Blvd | Houma, LA | — | — | 4.3 | 76 | $100K |
| Kg Car Detailing | , LA | — | — | 5.0 | 69 | — |
| Super Wash Xpress 918 N Canal Blvd | Thibodaux, LA | Express Tunnel | — | 4.6 | 69 | $83K |
| Quarters Car Wash 100-114 Roy St | Houma, LA | — | — | 4.6 | 65 | $100K |
| Auto Spa 1647 Martin Luther King Blvd | Houma, LA | Express Tunnel | Auto Spa | 4.1 | 55 | $100K |
| Auto Spa 1304 St Charles St | Houma, LA | Express Tunnel | Auto Spa | 4.5 | 53 | $100K |
| Yellowfin Car Wash 296 S Hollywood Rd | Houma, LA | — | — | 3.8 | 51 | $100K |
| Splash Too Soft Touch Car Wash | Bayou Blue, LA | — | — | 4.1 | 48 | — |
| Advanced Softwash & Detailing 220 Baptiste Cir | Houma, LA | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 47 | $44K |
| Phillips 66 101 Thoroughbred Park Dr | Thibodaux, LA | — | Phillips 66 | 4.5 | 40 | $83K |
| Splash Car Wash 112 S Van Ave | Houma, LA | — | — | 3.9 | 34 | $44K |
| Splash Too 200 Mystic Blvd | Houma, LA | — | — | 3.9 | 33 | $100K |
| Cleaner Image Auto Detailing 810 Magnolia St | Houma, LA | Detail Shop | — | 4.9 | 33 | $100K |
| Luxe Wash Auto Detailing | , LA | — | — | 4.9 | 31 | — |
| Auto Spa 828 N Canal Blvd | Thibodaux, LA | Express Tunnel | Auto Spa | 4.6 | 29 | $83K |
| Top Class Mobile Detailing | , LA | — | — | 4.3 | 28 | — |
| Lockport Exxon 407 Crescent Ave | Lockport, LA | — | — | 3.7 | 25 | $65K |
| Bayou Details | , LA | — | — | 5.0 | 21 | — |
| Get Your Shine On Detail Shop 471 Grand Caillou Rd | Houma, LA | — | — | 4.4 | 20 | $44K |
Compare Houma to other LA 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). Houma car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/houma
WashIndex. "Houma car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified June 9, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/houma.
"Houma car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Jun. 9, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/houma.
@misc{washindex_car_wash_markets_houma_2026,
title = {{Houma car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {Jun},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/houma},
urldate = {2026-06-09},
} About this analysis
Car wash inventory for the Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA 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 481 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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