Market Analysis · CBSA 31080

Los Angeles Car Wash Market Analysis

Name: Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Car Wash Market Dataset
Creator: WashIndex
License: https://washindex.com/terms

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA

Data updated · September 26, 2026

A read of Los Angeles's car wash market built from 365,281 Google reviews across 6,893 locations. Format mix, operator rank, county breakdown, rating vs. income, aspect-level customer signals.

Snapshot

Locations: 6,893; 95% independent
Chains: 91; lead: Shell (47 sites)
Avg rating: 4.33★; -0.08 vs national MSA median
Damage rate: 2.0%; 1.3× national MSA norm
Cancel friction: 11.5%
Top format: detail shop; 51% of classified inventory
Median single wash: $12; range $4–$50
Median unlimited: $23/mo; cheapest $10/mo at BLISS Car Wash - Santa Clarita

Market Quality snapshot

Population: 13,012,469; ACS 2023 5-year
Households: 4,464,908; ACS 2023 5-year
Residents per wash: 1,888; near the national MSA median
Express tunnels per 10K households: 0.5; below the ~0.5 expandable band · classified sites

Key findings

6,893 car wash locations operated by 91 chains and 6,544 independents across 2 counties.
Weighted Google rating 4.33★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-metro norms.
Built from 365,281 Google reviews, 110,379 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.

6,893 car wash locations across 2 counties · dots colored by format · sized by review volume

Locations

6,893

Chains

+ 6,544 independents

Reviews

365K

Avg Rating

4.33

Damage Rate

2.00%

Median AGI/return

$75K

location-weighted

Executive Read

Los Angeles reads as a balanced car wash market — neither sharply consolidated nor unusually fragmented. 91 chains compete alongside 6,544 independents — typical mix for a market of 6,893 car washes. Customer-experience signals across 110,379 AI-extracted reviews produce the distinct read on this market.

Headline numbers sit near US-metro norms: rating 4.33★, damage 2.0%, cancel friction 11.5%. Equipment reliability runs as the sharpest friction (-0.40). 365,281 Google reviews drive the analysis, 110,379 of them processed through the WashIndex LLM extractor.

Published pricing across the 261 of 7028 Los Angeles locations with menus available: median single car wash $12 (range $4–$50), median unlimited membership $23/month (range $10–$99/mo). The cheapest unlimited membership in the metro is $10/mo at BLISS Car Wash - Santa Clarita (SHOWROOM SHINE IN 5 MINUTES).

Top operators

See the top car wash chains in Los Angeles

Ranked by location count in the metro

→

$$ Pricing

What does a car wash cost in the Los Angeles metro?

Published menu pricing for car washes in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent. 261 of 7028 tracked locations have usable published pricing (4% coverage).

Single Wash

$12

median · range $4–$50 · 183 locations tracked

Unlimited Membership

$23 per month

median · range $10–$99 per month · 169 programs tracked

Cheapest unlimited memberships in Los Angeles
1	BLISS Car Wash - Santa Clarita SHOWROOM SHINE IN 5 MINUTES	$10 per mo
2	Fast5Xpress Car Wash South Gate Bronze	$10 per mo
3	Bubble Express Car Wash Monthly Wash Club	$10 per mo
4	The Wave Euclid Basic	$10 per mo
5	AutoxCare Basic	$10 per mo

Cheapest single car washes in Los Angeles
1	Mission Car Wash Vinyl/Leather Dressing Tires	$4
2	Bixby Knolls Car Wash Large Vehicle Extra	$4
3	TK Express Car Wash Tire Armorall - S	$4
4	Newport Beach Car Wash Small SUVs or Trucks	$4
5	Star Express Car Wash Star Express Wash Code (Organization Cost)	$5

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 Los Angeles metro, officially

Major market

the Los Angeles metro is one of the country's largest car-wash job markets — 808 employer establishments and about 9,712 jobs at a $34,944 average annual wage.

Employer establishments

808

NAICS 811192 · 2024

Industry jobs

9,712

private, annual avg

Avg annual wage

$34,944

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 Los Angeles metro

Balanced mix

Since 2010, the U.S. Small Business Administration has backed 331 car-wash loans in the Los Angeles metro worth $592M, at a $1,525,000 median per car wash and a 2.6% charge-off rate. Its purpose mix tracks the national pattern — a blend of new builds, acquisitions, and reinvestment by existing operators — with no single signal dominating.

SBA loans

331

FY2010–2026

Total approved

$592M

7(a) + 504

Median loan

$1.5M

per car wash

Charge-off rate

2.6%

of 194 resolved

SBA car-wash loans approved per fiscal year

FY2026 annualized from its first 6 months.

Loans by county

Los Angeles 249
Orange 82

What the loans fund · estimated from loan terms

New build / open22% · $2.0M
Acquisition10% · $2.2M
Expansion / improvement62% · $1.4M
Working capital4% · $40K
Unclassified2% · $400K

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 Los Angeles car wash market

How many car washes are in the Los Angeles metro?

There are 6,893 car wash locations across the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA CBSA, spanning 2 counties.

What is the best-rated car wash in the Los Angeles metro?

Ultimate Shield in Orange, CA is the highest-rated car wash in the Los Angeles metro at 5.0★ across 563 Google reviews (filtering to locations with at least 100 reviews).

Which car wash chain has the most locations in Los Angeles?

Shell has the most locations in the Los Angeles metro with 47 sites, followed by 76 (44 sites). The metro has 91 multi-location operators in total, alongside 6,544 independent or single-location sites.

What is the average customer rating in the Los Angeles car wash market?

The review-weighted average rating across all 6,893 car washes in the Los Angeles metro is 4.33★, based on 365,281 Google reviews processed through WashIndex's customer-experience pipeline.

What is the typical household income near car washes in Los Angeles?

Across the ZIP codes containing the Los Angeles metro's car washes, the location-weighted median IRS-reported AGI per tax return is $75K (tax year 2022) — a rough proxy for trade-area household income.

How much does a car wash cost in Los Angeles?

Single-wash prices across the Los Angeles car wash market range from $4 to $50, with a median of $12 across 183 locations that publish their pricing. The cheapest single car wash in the metro is $4 at Mission Car Wash (Vinyl/Leather Dressing Tires). Pricing data is captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent.

How much does an unlimited car wash membership cost in Los Angeles?

Unlimited car wash memberships in the Los Angeles metro range from $10/month to $99/month, with a median of $23/month across 169 programs tracked. The cheapest unlimited membership is $10/month at BLISS Car Wash - Santa Clarita (SHOWROOM SHINE IN 5 MINUTES); the most expensive tracked is $99/month at Sam's Steam Auto Detail (Silver Package).

What is the cheapest car wash in Los Angeles?

The cheapest single car wash in the Los Angeles metro is $4 at Mission Car Wash (Vinyl/Leather Dressing Tires tier). For ongoing customers, the cheapest unlimited membership is $10/month at BLISS Car Wash - Santa Clarita (SHOWROOM SHINE IN 5 MINUTES) — a break-even of roughly 0.8 washes per month at the metro's median single-wash price of $12.

01 Format Mix

What kinds of car washes does Los Angeles have?

The format mix in Los Angeles reads as a typical mid-market US metro — express tunnels and detail shops carrying the bulk of supply, with full-service and self-serve layered in. The bar chart pairs location count with per-format average rating.

Highest-rated format: Detail Shop at 4.78★ across 452 locations. Lowest-rated: In-Bay Automatic at 3.84★ (112 locations).

6,010 (87.2%) of 6,893 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	6,010	87.2%	151,330	4.23	1.78%	15.4%
Detail Shop	452	6.6%	36,226	4.78	0.55%	0.0%
Express Tunnel	201	2.9%	129,757	4.47	2.54%	11.4%
In-Bay Automatic	112	1.6%	11,316	3.84	1.15%	6.3%
Full Service	100	1.5%	32,555	3.97	4.02%	7.5%
Self-Serve Bay	18	0.3%	4,097	4.12	1.05%	0.0%

02 Income & Demographics

What is the household income near Los Angeles car washes?

Each ZIP in Los Angeles 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 1,933 qualifying locations: 0.02 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income. Scatter mean: $96K AGI/return, 4.31★.

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

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	42	635	48,998	4.24	Detail Shop (48)
$50K – $75K	92	1,185	129,446	4.33	Detail Shop (130)
$75K – $100K	65	688	69,222	4.33	Detail Shop (100)
$100K – $150K	71	600	59,264	4.27	Detail Shop (92)
$150K+	75	498	36,496	4.25	Detail Shop (82)

The highest-income tier ($150K+) contains 498 car washes across 75 ZIPs at 4.25★, against 635 sites across 42 ZIPs at 4.24★ in the lowest. Middle-income tiers typically host the densest express-tunnel concentrations — the part of the income curve where that format's unit economics are strongest.

03 Dominant Chains

Who operates the most Los Angeles car washes?

91 chains alongside 6,544 independents make up Los Angeles'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	Shell	47	3,975	3.62	1.10%	—	0.22%
2	76	44	5,493	3.97	1.44%	—	0.00%
3	Chevron	22	1,615	3.52	1.76%	—	1.32%
4	Fast5Xpress Car Wash	16	12,585	4.40	3.71%	11.0%	0.14%
5	LUV Car Wash	14	10,872	4.55	1.77%	11.8%	0.31%
6	Spot Free Car Wash	10	1,930	3.78	2.86%	21.6%	0.57%
7	Quick Quack Car Wash	10	12,157	4.75	1.61%	6.3%	0.30%
8	BLISS Car Wash - Brea	10	16,967	4.86	0.95%	5.6%	0.32%
9	Circle K	10	416	3.50	0.86%	—	0.00%
10	Mister Car Wash	8	8,599	4.28	5.29%	11.6%	2.39%
11	H2GO Car Wash	6	2,807	4.21	9.36%	12.9%	0.29%
12	Roscoe Speedwash	6	2,855	4.23	2.39%	11.1%	0.16%
13	Bellagio Express Car Wash	5	3,879	4.20	6.95%	22.4%	0.71%
14	Denny's Car Wash	5	1,099	4.21	—	—	—
15	Conoco	5	999	4.15	—	—	—
16	Wild Water Express Car Wash	4	2,224	4.37	2.75%	10.0%	0.21%
17	Rapids Express Car Wash	4	1,637	4.43	5.25%	17.3%	0.29%
18	Super Star Car Wash	4	9,607	4.84	0.97%	4.3%	0.48%
19	ECO Mobile Detailing	4	658	4.52	2.69%	—	1.88%
20	Network Auto Body	4	262	4.14	—	—	—
21	Costco Car Wash	3	610	4.21	—	—	—
22	Superfine Auto Spa	3	416	3.53	—	—	—
23	Chemical Guys	3	899	4.52	0.68%	—	0.00%
24	Famous Auto Detail Supplies	3	464	4.97	0.00%	—	0.00%
25	Wild Wash Express	3	1,494	4.34	13.10%	—	0.00%

04 County Breakdown

Which counties have the most car washes in Los Angeles?

The table below splits the metro's car wash inventory across the 2 counties of the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA CBSA, with location count, total reviews, and weighted-average rating per county.

Cross-county rating dispersion: 0.12★ between the highest- and lowest-rated counties with meaningful sample size.

County	Locations	% of MSA	Reviews	Avg Rating
Los Angeles County	4,733	68.7%	267,903	4.30
Orange County	2,160	31.3%	97,378	4.42

05 Customer Experience Signals

What do customers love and complain about in Los Angeles?

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.

Staff +0.81

Facility Cleanliness +0.74

Wash Quality +0.74

Wait Time +0.53

Per-Wash Price +0.38

Membership Value +0.29

Equipment Working -0.40

06 All Locations

Where are all the car washes in the Los Angeles metro?

The complete inventory of car wash locations in the Los Angeles 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
Super Star Car Wash - Crenshaw Blvd & Marine Ave 15015 Crenshaw Blvd	Gardena, CA	Express Tunnel	Super Star Car Wash	4.9	3,250	$66K
BLISS Car Wash - Covina 744 N Grand Ave	Covina, CA	Express Tunnel	BLISS Car Wash - Brea	4.9	2,618	$91K
BLISS Car Wash - Aliso Viejo 26871 Aliso Creek Rd	Aliso Viejo, CA	Express Tunnel	BLISS Car Wash - Brea	4.9	2,403	$136K
Super Star Car Wash - Gaffey St & Channel St 1010 N Gaffey St	San Pedro, CA	Express Tunnel	Super Star Car Wash	4.9	2,370	$73K
Quick Quack Car Wash 210 N Euclid Way	Anaheim, CA	Express Tunnel	Quick Quack Car Wash	4.7	2,286	$54K
Super Star Car Wash - Hobart Blvd & MLK Jr Blvd 1640 W Martin Luther King Jr Blvd	Los Angeles, CA	Express Tunnel	Super Star Car Wash	4.8	2,210	$46K
Mister Car Wash 4810 W Imperial Hwy	Inglewood, CA	Express Tunnel	Mister Car Wash	4.4	1,932	$47K
BLISS Car Wash - City of Industry 120 S Hacienda Blvd	City of Industry, CA	Express Tunnel	BLISS Car Wash - Brea	4.8	1,930	$83K
Quick Quack Car Wash 2961 W Ball Rd	Anaheim, CA	Express Tunnel	Quick Quack Car Wash	4.8	1,907	$56K
BLISS Car Wash - Palmdale 1022 Rancho Vista Blvd	Palmdale, CA	Express Tunnel	BLISS Car Wash - Brea	4.8	1,893	$84K
Quick Quack Car Wash 520 S Euclid St	Fullerton, CA	Express Tunnel	Quick Quack Car Wash	4.6	1,882	$68K
LUV Car Wash - Sherman Way 14537 Sherman Way	Van Nuys, CA	Express Tunnel	LUV Car Wash	4.5	1,809	$51K
Super Star Car Wash - Western Ave & Pacific Coast Hwy 1662 Pacific Coast Hwy	Harbor City, CA	Express Tunnel	Super Star Car Wash	4.7	1,777	$69K
BLISS Car Wash - Van Nuys 15650 Sherman Way	Van Nuys, CA	Express Tunnel	BLISS Car Wash - Brea	4.8	1,620	$70K
Mister Car Wash 39315 10th St W	Palmdale, CA	Express Tunnel	Mister Car Wash	4.1	1,595	$84K
Mister Car Wash 740 Washington Blvd	Montebello, CA	Express Tunnel	Mister Car Wash	4.5	1,584	$60K
LUV Car Wash - Ventura Blvd 22517 Ventura Blvd	Woodland Hills, CA	Express Tunnel	LUV Car Wash	4.7	1,540	$209K
Fast5Xpress Car Wash Pasadena 2400 E Colorado Blvd	Pasadena, CA	Express Tunnel	Fast5Xpress Car Wash	4.4	1,524	$146K
BLISS Car Wash - Santa Clarita 24030 Copper Hill Dr	Santa Clarita, CA	Express Tunnel	BLISS Car Wash - Brea	4.9	1,521	$127K
Mister Car Wash 524 W Ave J	Lancaster, CA	Express Tunnel	Mister Car Wash	4.1	1,476	$52K
LUV Car Wash - Sunset Blvd 7955 Sunset Blvd	Los Angeles, CA	Express Tunnel	LUV Car Wash	4.4	1,469	$137K
BLISS Car Wash - Placentia 600 N Rose Dr	Placentia, CA	Express Tunnel	BLISS Car Wash - Brea	4.8	1,445	$94K
Lakewood Car Wash & Detail Center 5730 Lakewood Blvd	Lakewood, CA	Express Tunnel	—	4.5	1,434	$90K
LUV Car Wash - Topanga Canyon Blvd 6829 Topanga Canyon Blvd	Canoga Park, CA	Express Tunnel	LUV Car Wash	4.5	1,348	$55K
Santa Ana Express Car Wash 202 E 1st St	Santa Ana, CA	Express Tunnel	—	4.3	1,327	$49K

Nearby Other CA metros

Compare Los Angeles to other CA car wash markets

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

Riverside 3,127 San Diego 1,923 San Francisco 1,473 Sacramento 1,334 Fresno 888 San Jose 722

Cite this page

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

APA

WashIndex. (2026, September 26). Los Angeles car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/los-angeles

Chicago

WashIndex. "Los Angeles car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified September 26, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/los-angeles.

MLA

"Los Angeles car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Sep. 26, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/los-angeles.

BibTeX

@misc{washindex_car_wash_markets_los_angeles_2026,
  title  = {{Los Angeles car wash market analysis}},
  author = {{WashIndex}},
  year   = {2026},
  month  = {Sep},
  url    = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/los-angeles},
  urldate = {2026-09-26},
}

About this analysis

Car wash inventory for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 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 110,379 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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