Kingston Car Wash Market Analysis
Kingston, NY
Data updated · June 9, 2026
3,045 Google reviews across 59 car washes in 1 Kingston counties. Format mix, operator rank, county breakdown, rating vs. income, aspect-level customer signals.
Snapshot
- Locations
- 59
- 88% independent
- Chains
- 2
- lead: Scrub Co Car Wash (5 sites)
- Avg rating
- 4.31★
- -0.10 vs national MSA median
- Damage rate
- 0.9%
- 1.8× below national norm
- Cancel friction
- 20.0%
- Top format
- express tunnel
- 47% of classified inventory
- Median single wash
- $15
- range $5–$50
- Median unlimited
- $28.99/mo
- cheapest $25/mo at Scrub Co Car Wash
Market Quality snapshot
- Population
- 182,109
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Households
- 73,105
- ACS 2023 5-year
- Residents per wash
- 3,087
- 1.6× the national MSA median — lighter supply
- Express tunnels per 10K households
- 1.0
- in the 0.5–1.0 filling band · classified sites
Key findings
- 59 car wash locations operated by 2 chains and 52 independents across 1 county.
- Weighted Google rating 4.31★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-metro norms.
- Built from 3,045 Google reviews, 672 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
59 car wash locations across 1 counties · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Tracked at 59 car wash locations, Kingston matches the structural profile of the typical US metro of comparable size. 2 chains compete alongside 52 independents — typical mix for a market of 59 car washes. Customer-experience signals across 672 AI-extracted reviews produce the distinct read on this market.
Headline numbers sit near US-metro norms: rating 4.31★, damage 0.9%, cancel friction 20.0%. Equipment reliability runs as the sharpest friction (-0.64). 3,045 Google reviews drive the analysis, 672 of them processed through the WashIndex LLM extractor.
Published pricing across the 10 of 59 Kingston locations with menus available: median single car wash $15 (range $5–$50), median unlimited membership $28.99/month (range $25–$90/mo). The cheapest unlimited membership in the metro is $25/mo at Scrub Co Car Wash (Ceramic).
See the top car wash chains in Kingston
Ranked by location count in the metro
What does a car wash cost in the Kingston metro?
Published menu pricing for car washes in the Kingston metropolitan area, captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent. 10 of 59 tracked locations have usable published pricing (17% coverage).
| Cheapest unlimited memberships in Kingston | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scrub Co Car Wash Ceramic | $25 per mo |
| 2 | Scrub Co Express - Ulster Standard | $28.99 per mo |
| 3 | Scrub Co Express Standard | $28.99 per mo |
| 4 | Hoffman Car Wash Exterior | $29.99 per mo |
| 5 | JP OCD Detailers Monthly Maintenance OCD Family Care Plan - No Kids Sedan Size Vehicle | $90 per mo |
| Cheapest single car washes in Kingston | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hoffman Car Wash Self Service - Tap or Swipe Start | $5 |
| 2 | Community Car Wash Touch-Free Super | $10 |
| 3 | Scrub Co Car Wash Standard | $12 |
| 4 | Scrub Co Car and Dog wash Standard | $12 |
| 5 | Hoffman Car Wash Exterior | $15 |
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.
The car wash industry in the Kingston metro, officially
the Kingston metro has 10 car-wash employer establishments employing about 47 people, at a $32,965 average annual wage.
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 Kingston car wash market
How many car washes are in the Kingston metro?
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What is the best-rated car wash in the Kingston metro?
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Which car wash chain has the most locations in Kingston?
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What is the average customer rating in the Kingston car wash market?
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What is the typical household income near car washes in Kingston?
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How much does a car wash cost in Kingston?
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How much does an unlimited car wash membership cost in Kingston?
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What is the cheapest car wash in Kingston?
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What kinds of car washes does Kingston have?
Format counts below split Kingston's 59 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 4.99★ across 7 locations. Lowest-rated: Self-Serve Bay at 3.80★ (1 locations).
44 (74.6%) of 59 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 | 44 | 74.6% | 654 | 4.25 | 0.42% | — |
| Express Tunnel | 7 | 11.9% | 1,710 | 4.16 | 2.94% | 20.0% |
| Detail Shop | 7 | 11.9% | 541 | 4.99 | 0.00% | 0.0% |
| Self-Serve Bay | 1 | 1.7% | 140 | 3.80 | 0.00% | 33.3% |
What is the household income near Kingston car washes?
Read together with the format mix above, the income scatter below tells you whether car wash quality in Kingston tracks neighborhood income, format mix, or neither. Operating quality usually dominates this picture.
Pearson r between ZIP income and Google rating across 24 qualifying locations: -0.07 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income. Scatter mean: $81K AGI/return, 4.38★.
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 | 3 | 12 | 1,461 | 4.10 | Express Tunnel (5) |
| $75K – $100K | 9 | 18 | 1,060 | 4.63 | Detail Shop (6) |
| $100K – $150K | 3 | 4 | 296 | 3.78 | Express Tunnel (1) |
| $150K+ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
Top-tier 0 sites, 0.00★ avg; bottom-tier 0 sites, 0.00★. Across Kingston's 24 qualifying locations, the income gradient correlates only weakly with rating — operator execution dominates.
Who operates the most Kingston car washes?
The table below ranks the top 25 chains operating in Kingston 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 | Scrub Co Car Wash | 5 | 1,117 | 4.29 | 2.26% | — | 0.00% |
| 2 | Hoffman Car Wash | 2 | 593 | 3.90 | — | — | — |
Which counties have the most car washes in Kingston?
The table below splits the metro's car wash inventory across the 1 counties of the Kingston, NY CBSA, with location count, total reviews, and weighted-average rating per county.
| County | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ulster County | 59 | 100.0% | 3,045 | 4.31 |
What do customers love and complain about in Kingston?
Reading the aspect grid: numbers above 0.3 are strong positives; numbers below -0.1 indicate meaningful friction; in between is mixed signal. staff is the brightest spot here. equipment reliability is the pain point.
Where are all the car washes in the Kingston metro?
Top 25 car washes by review volume in Kingston. The full set of 59 is available in the underlying dataset.
| Location | City | Format | Chain | Rating | Reviews | ZIP AGI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scrub Co Express - Ulster 404 Old Neighborhood Rd | Kingston, NY | Express Tunnel | Scrub Co Car Wash | 4.3 | 362 | $73K |
| Hoffman Car Wash 1091 Ulster Ave | Kingston, NY | Express Tunnel | Hoffman Car Wash | 3.9 | 328 | $73K |
| Hoffman Car Wash 750 Ulster Ave | Kingston, NY | Express Tunnel | Hoffman Car Wash | 3.9 | 265 | $73K |
| Scrub Co Car Wash 89 North Ct | Port Ewen, NY | Express Tunnel | Scrub Co Car Wash | 4.5 | 262 | $76K |
| Scrub Co Car Wash 13 N Main St | Ellenville, NY | Express Tunnel | Scrub Co Car Wash | 4.0 | 195 | $58K |
| Fresh Details | Auto Detailing & Ceramic Coating 267 Ridge Rd | Milton, NY | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 173 | $86K |
| Scrub Co Car and Dog wash 143 N Chestnut St | New Paltz, NY | Express Tunnel | Scrub Co Car Wash | 4.3 | 168 | $106K |
| Hudson Valley Detail 53 Samsonville Rd | Kerhonkson, NY | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 155 | $82K |
| Community Car Wash 3509 US-9W | Highland, NY | Self-Serve Bay | — | 3.8 | 140 | $85K |
| Scrub Co Express 660 Washington Ave | Kingston, NY | Express Tunnel | Scrub Co Car Wash | 4.3 | 130 | $73K |
| Diamond Car Wash 526 Main St | New Paltz, NY | — | — | 3.0 | 121 | $106K |
| 2Fast Performance 56 Main St | Esopus, NY | — | — | 4.9 | 95 | — |
| Route 28 Car Wash NY-28 | Kingston, NY | — | — | 4.1 | 78 | $73K |
| Car Cleaning Company 595 New Paltz Rd | Highland, NY | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 66 | $85K |
| Dwayne's Auto Detailing 1 Mile Hill Rd | Highland, NY | — | — | 4.9 | 57 | $85K |
| JP OCD Detailers 152 Kisor Rd | Highland, NY | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 46 | $85K |
| The Detail Shop Of Highland NY ALL AUTOMOTIVE BUILDING, 244 Upper North Rd SUITE 3 | Highland, NY | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 41 | $85K |
| 9 W Car Wash 5 Arthur Ln | Saugerties, NY | — | — | 3.1 | 37 | $82K |
| Waxing Off Mobile Detailing | , NY | — | — | 4.9 | 33 | — |
| 3C Detailing 454 NY-28 | Kingston, NY | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 32 | $73K |
| Auto Perfection Detailing 21 Pine Grove Rd | Saugerties, NY | Detail Shop | — | 4.9 | 28 | $82K |
| M&L Detail NY | , NY | — | — | 5.0 | 27 | — |
| PERFORMANCE DETAIL & CUSTOM 86 Post St | Saugerties, NY | — | — | 4.8 | 24 | $82K |
| Route 32 Car Wash 1102 NY-32 | Rosendale, NY | — | — | 3.1 | 22 | $75K |
| NorthEast Auto Design 883 NY-28 | Kingston, NY | — | — | 4.8 | 22 | $73K |
Compare Kingston to other NY 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). Kingston car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/kingston
WashIndex. "Kingston car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified June 9, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/kingston.
"Kingston car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Jun. 9, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/kingston.
@misc{washindex_car_wash_markets_kingston_2026,
title = {{Kingston car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {Jun},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/kingston},
urldate = {2026-06-09},
} About this analysis
Car wash inventory for the Kingston, NY CBSA is determined by point-in-polygon test against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024) for the 1 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 672 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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