A read of Nashville's car wash market built from 87,306 Google reviews across 1,234 locations. Format mix, operator rank, county breakdown, rating vs. income, aspect-level customer signals.
Snapshot
Locations
1,234
89% independent
Chains
29
lead: Wash N Roll Car Wash (20 sites)
Avg rating
4.45★
near national MSA median
Damage rate
1.8%
near national MSA norm
Cancel friction
21.0%
Top format
express tunnel
48% of classified inventory
Market Quality snapshot
Population
2,043,713
ACS 2023 5-year
Households
805,828
ACS 2023 5-year
Residents per wash
1,656
near the national MSA median
Express tunnels per 10K households
1.2
above ~1.0 — contested · classified sites
Key findings
1,234 car wash locations operated by 29 chains and 1,093 independents across 14 counties.
Weighted Google rating 4.45★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-metro norms.
Built from 87,306 Google reviews, 29,397 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.
1,234 car wash locations across 14 counties · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
Locations
1,234
Chains
29
+ 1,093 independents
Reviews
87K
Avg Rating
4.45
Damage Rate
1.84%
Median AGI/return
$79K
location-weighted
Executive Read
Tracked at 1,234 car wash locations, Nashville matches the structural profile of the typical US metro of comparable size. 1,234 locations across 29 chains and 1,093 independents, distributed across 14 counties. Distinctive patterns show up below at the format and aspect levels.
Weighted rating 4.45★; damage 1.8%; membership-cancel friction 21.0%. Equipment reliability runs as the sharpest friction (-0.50). 87,306 Google reviews drive the analysis, 29,397 of them processed through the WashIndex LLM extractor.
The car wash industry in the Nashville metro, officially
High-wage
Car-wash wages in the Nashville metro run about 21% above the national average ($39,411 vs. $32,560), across 145 employer establishments and roughly 1,160 jobs.
Employer establishments
145
NAICS 811192 · 2024
Industry jobs
1,160
private, annual avg
Avg annual wage
$39,411
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 Nashville metro
Build-out market
Since 2010, the U.S. Small Business Administration has backed 41 car-wash loans in the Nashville metro worth $68.7M, at a $1,124,500 median per car wash and a 3.9% charge-off rate. The mix tilts toward new construction — 59% of loans funded brand-new washes, above the 33% national norm — pointing to a market where operators are still adding supply.
SBA loans
41
FY2010–2025
Total approved
$68.7M
7(a) + 504
Median loan
$1.1M
per car wash
Charge-off rate
3.9%
of 26 resolved
SBA car-wash loans approved per fiscal year
Loans by county
Rutherford12
Williamson10
Davidson8
Maury5
Dickson2
Cheatham1
What the loans fund · estimated from loan terms
New build / open59% · $1.7M
Expansion / improvement29% · $775K
Working capital12% · $15K
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 Nashville car wash market
How many car washes are in the Nashville metro?
+
There are 1,234 car wash locations across the Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN CBSA, spanning 14 counties.
What is the best-rated car wash in the Nashville metro?
+
Deep Steam - Carpet Cleaning ,Floor Care, Rug Cleaning Shop & Restoration ( Water, Mold, Fire) in Nashville, TN is the highest-rated car wash in the Nashville metro at 5.0★ across 1,166 Google reviews (filtering to locations with at least 100 reviews).
Which car wash chain has the most locations in Nashville?
+
Wash N Roll Car Wash has the most locations in the Nashville metro with 20 sites, followed by bp (17 sites). The metro has 29 multi-location operators in total, alongside 1,093 independent or single-location sites.
What is the average customer rating in the Nashville car wash market?
+
The review-weighted average rating across all 1,234 car washes in the Nashville metro is 4.45★, based on 87,306 Google reviews processed through WashIndex's customer-experience pipeline.
What is the typical household income near car washes in Nashville?
+
Across the ZIP codes containing the Nashville metro's car washes, the location-weighted median IRS-reported AGI per tax return is $79K (tax year 2022) — a rough proxy for trade-area household income.
01Format Mix
What kinds of car washes does Nashville have?
The format mix in Nashville 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 4.88★ across 65 locations.
Lowest-rated: Self-Serve Bay at 3.84★ (5 locations).
1,035 (83.9%)
of 1,234 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
1,035
83.9%
24,423
4.47
0.53%
5.3%
Express Tunnel
96
7.8%
44,184
4.35
3.01%
21.8%
Detail Shop
65
5.3%
5,839
4.88
0.54%
4.9%
In-Bay Automatic
19
1.5%
1,029
3.89
1.10%
33.3%
Full Service
14
1.1%
11,446
4.59
1.32%
17.2%
Self-Serve Bay
5
0.4%
385
3.84
2.42%
50.0%
02Income & Demographics
What is the household income near Nashville car washes?
Read together with the format mix above, the income scatter below tells you whether car wash quality in Nashville tracks neighborhood income, format mix, or neither. Operating quality usually dominates this picture.
Pearson r between ZIP income and Google rating across 351 qualifying locations: 0.09 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income.
Scatter mean: $95K AGI/return, 4.26★.
Express Tunnel Detail Shop 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
2
21
2,848
4.21
Express Tunnel (4)
$50K – $75K
28
225
32,695
4.38
Express Tunnel (35)
$75K – $100K
21
153
28,872
4.46
Express Tunnel (31)
$100K – $150K
6
73
8,718
4.33
Express Tunnel (17)
$150K+
11
62
7,367
4.47
Detail Shop (15)
Income band spread: 62/4.47★ at the highest tier; 21/4.21★ 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.
03Dominant Chains
Who operates the most Nashville car washes?
29 chains run sites in Nashville; 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.
Which counties have the most car washes in Nashville?
The table below splits the metro's car wash inventory across the 14 counties of the Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN CBSA, with location count, total reviews, and weighted-average rating per county.
Cross-county rating dispersion: 0.72★ between the highest- and lowest-rated counties with meaningful sample size.
What do customers love and complain about in Nashville?
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+0.82
Wash Quality+0.72
Facility Cleanliness+0.63
Wait Time+0.60
Per-Wash Price+0.24
Membership Value-0.07
Equipment Working-0.50
06All Locations
Where are all the car washes in the Nashville metro?
1,234 car washes are tracked in Nashville; below is the top of the list by Google review count. Locations with fewer than 10 reviews are excluded from the rating column.
Data as of 2026-09-26.
Pick a format and click Copy.
APA
WashIndex. (2026, September 26). Nashville car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/nashville
Chicago
WashIndex. "Nashville car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified September 26, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/nashville.
MLA
"Nashville car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Sep. 26, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/nashville.
BibTeX
@misc{washindex_car_wash_markets_nashville_2026,
title = {{Nashville car wash market analysis}},
author = {{WashIndex}},
year = {2026},
month = {Sep},
url = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/nashville},
urldate = {2026-09-26},
}
About this analysis
Car wash inventory for the Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN CBSA is determined by point-in-polygon test against the
official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024) for the 14 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 29,397 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.
The free WashIndex platform shows every Nashville car wash on an interactive map, with the same review-derived
signals and demographic overlays that power this analysis. Filter by format, drive-time, or operator and compare any
location head-to-head with its true competitive set.