Market Analysis · CBSA 35620

New York Car Wash Market Analysis

Name: New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Car Wash Market Dataset
Creator: WashIndex
License: https://washindex.com/terms

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA

Data updated · September 26, 2026

527,064 Google reviews across 5,715 car washes in 24 New York counties. Format mix, operator rank, county breakdown, rating vs. income, aspect-level customer signals.

Snapshot

Locations: 5,715; 92% independent
Chains: 99; lead: bp (149 sites)
Avg rating: 4.29★; -0.12 vs national MSA median
Damage rate: 2.1%; 1.3× national MSA norm
Cancel friction: 11.9%
Top format: detail shop; 52% of classified inventory
Median single wash: $15; range $4–$50
Median unlimited: $24.99/mo; cheapest $10/mo at SPLASH The Car Wash - Hand Car Wash/ Detail Center/Auto Repair

Market Quality snapshot

Population: 19,756,722; ACS 2023 5-year
Households: 7,362,500; ACS 2023 5-year
Residents per wash: 3,457; 1.8× the national MSA median — lighter supply
Express tunnels per 10K households: 0.2; below the ~0.5 expandable band · classified sites

Key findings

5,715 car wash locations operated by 99 chains and 5,263 independents across 24 counties.
Weighted Google rating 4.29★ across the market; structural concentration and format mix sit near US-metro norms.
Built from 527,064 Google reviews, 164,260 of them AI-extracted across 55 dimensions.

5,715 car wash locations across 24 counties · dots colored by format · sized by review volume

Locations

5,715

Chains

+ 5,263 independents

Reviews

527K

Avg Rating

4.29

Damage Rate

2.10%

Median AGI/return

$82K

location-weighted

Executive Read

New York's car wash market reads as US-metro-typical in shape; the distinctive cuts are at the format and aspect levels. 5,715 locations across 99 chains and 5,263 independents, distributed across 24 counties. Distinctive patterns show up below at the format and aspect levels.

Weighted rating 4.29★; damage 2.1%; membership-cancel friction 11.9%. Staff is the brightest aspect signal (0.74/+1). 527,064 Google reviews drive the analysis, 164,260 of them processed through the WashIndex LLM extractor.

Published pricing across the 329 of 5820 New York locations with menus available: median single car wash $15 (range $4–$50), median unlimited membership $24.99/month (range $10–$100/mo). The cheapest unlimited membership in the metro is $10/mo at SPLASH The Car Wash - Hand Car Wash/ Detail Center/Auto Repair (SERVICE PRICE).

Top operators

See the top car wash chains in New York

Ranked by location count in the metro

→

$$ Pricing

What does a car wash cost in the New York metro?

Published menu pricing for car washes in the New York metropolitan area, captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent. 329 of 5820 tracked locations have usable published pricing (6% coverage).

Single Wash

$15

median · range $4–$50 · 211 locations tracked

Unlimited Membership

$24.99 per month

median · range $10–$100 per month · 224 programs tracked

Cheapest unlimited memberships in New York
1	SPLASH The Car Wash - Hand Car Wash/ Detail Center/Auto Repair SERVICE PRICE	$10 per mo
2	Yaadman auto spa From	$10 per mo
3	Zap Car Wash & Lube of North Bergen EXTERIOR WASH	$11 per mo
4	Zap Car Wash & Lube of Union City EXTERIOR WASH	$11 per mo
5	Zap Lube & Hand Car Wash of Newark (South Broad) EXTERIOR WASH	$11 per mo

Cheapest single car washes in New York
1	Trax Car Wash Basic Exterior	$4
2	SPLASH The Car Wash - Hand Car Wash/ Detail Center/Auto Repair SERVICE PRICE	$4
3	High Line Car Wash Rain X - Taxi	$4
4	Advance Car Wash Oil Change Auto inspection Wash #1	$4.99
5	LH Mobile Car Detailing Pricing	$4.99

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 New York metro, officially

Major market

the New York metro is one of the country's largest car-wash job markets — 979 employer establishments and about 8,887 jobs at a $36,358 average annual wage.

Employer establishments

979

NAICS 811192 · 2024

Industry jobs

8,887

private, annual avg

Avg annual wage

$36,358

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 New York metro

Operations-heavy

Since 2010, the U.S. Small Business Administration has backed 216 car-wash loans in the New York metro worth $229M, at a $750,000 median per car wash and a 10.9% charge-off rate. An outsized 23% of loans were for working capital rather than construction or acquisition (vs. 10% nationally), which can point to operators managing cash flow more than expanding.

SBA loans

216

FY2010–2026

Total approved

$229M

7(a) + 504

Median loan

$750K

per car wash

Charge-off rate

10.9%

of 101 resolved

SBA car-wash loans approved per fiscal year

FY2026 annualized from its first 6 months.

Loans by county

Suffolk 19
Middlesex 19
Union 17
Monmouth 16
Queens 16
Nassau 16

What the loans fund · estimated from loan terms

New build / open24% · $1.5M
Acquisition8% · $1.6M
Expansion / improvement40% · $904K
Working capital23% · $25K
Unclassified5% · $250K

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 New York car wash market

How many car washes are in the New York metro?

There are 5,715 car wash locations across the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA CBSA, spanning 24 counties.

What is the best-rated car wash in the New York metro?

ShineTek Auto Spa | Window Tinting | Paint Protection in Medford, NY is the highest-rated car wash in the New York metro at 5.0★ across 1,072 Google reviews (filtering to locations with at least 100 reviews).

Which car wash chain has the most locations in New York?

bp has the most locations in the New York metro with 149 sites, followed by Speeders Car Wash (17 sites). The metro has 99 multi-location operators in total, alongside 5,263 independent or single-location sites.

What is the average customer rating in the New York car wash market?

The review-weighted average rating across all 5,715 car washes in the New York metro is 4.29★, based on 527,064 Google reviews processed through WashIndex's customer-experience pipeline.

What is the typical household income near car washes in New York?

Across the ZIP codes containing the New York metro's car washes, the location-weighted median IRS-reported AGI per tax return is $82K (tax year 2022) — a rough proxy for trade-area household income.

How much does a car wash cost in New York?

Single-wash prices across the New York car wash market range from $4 to $50, with a median of $15 across 211 locations that publish their pricing. The cheapest single car wash in the metro is $4 at Trax Car Wash (Basic Exterior). Pricing data is captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent.

How much does an unlimited car wash membership cost in New York?

Unlimited car wash memberships in the New York metro range from $10/month to $100/month, with a median of $24.99/month across 224 programs tracked. The cheapest unlimited membership is $10/month at SPLASH The Car Wash - Hand Car Wash/ Detail Center/Auto Repair (SERVICE PRICE); the most expensive tracked is $100/month at Proshine Hand Car Wash & Detail Center (Price).

What is the cheapest car wash in New York?

The cheapest single car wash in the New York metro is $4 at Trax Car Wash (Basic Exterior tier). For ongoing customers, the cheapest unlimited membership is $10/month at SPLASH The Car Wash - Hand Car Wash/ Detail Center/Auto Repair (SERVICE PRICE) — a break-even of roughly 0.7 washes per month at the metro's median single-wash price of $15.

01 Format Mix

What kinds of car washes does New York have?

The table below lists every operating format we classify, with locations, reviews, average rating, damage rate, and membership-cancel friction broken out per format. New York's mix sits close to the US-metro median shape.

Highest-rated format: Detail Shop at 4.84★ across 565 locations. Lowest-rated: In-Bay Automatic at 3.82★ (168 locations).

4,619 (80.8%) of 5,715 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	4,619	80.8%	271,527	4.24	2.04%	10.7%
Detail Shop	565	9.9%	73,520	4.84	0.57%	3.6%
Full Service	206	3.6%	90,338	4.09	3.85%	11.0%
In-Bay Automatic	168	2.9%	13,224	3.82	2.08%	22.2%
Express Tunnel	149	2.6%	75,973	4.30	2.95%	13.0%
Self-Serve Bay	8	0.1%	2,482	4.15	2.62%	9.4%

02 Income & Demographics

What is the household income near New York car washes?

2,246 New York car washes with at least 10 Google reviews are plotted below against the mean IRS AGI per return for their ZIP. The Pearson correlation we compute is one of the cleanest cuts on whether neighborhood income meaningfully shapes wash quality here.

Pearson r between ZIP income and Google rating across 2,246 qualifying locations: 0.09 — effectively zero. Operating quality dominates over neighborhood income. Scatter mean: $104K AGI/return, 4.35★.

Detail Shop Full Service In-Bay Automatic Express Tunnel 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	64	490	57,797	4.07	Detail Shop (30)
$50K – $75K	138	993	136,009	4.15	Detail Shop (119)
$75K – $100K	155	937	142,187	4.35	Detail Shop (152)
$100K – $150K	148	682	93,289	4.35	Detail Shop (152)
$150K+	175	510	73,881	4.36	Detail Shop (110)

Income band spread: 510/4.36★ at the highest tier; 490/4.07★ 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 New York car washes?

99 chains run sites in New York; 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	bp	149	10,100	3.76	0.86%	—	0.95%
2	Speeders Car Wash	17	8,530	4.07	3.43%	12.1%	3.52%
3	Shell	16	941	3.72	0.90%	—	0.90%
4	Team Express Roselle	16	12,293	4.37	3.01%	8.7%	1.05%
5	Splash Car Wash Express	13	14,025	4.57	1.43%	9.8%	0.67%
6	Express Auto Spa - Jackson	10	3,739	4.38	2.83%	19.2%	1.90%
7	West Islip Hand Wash	8	2,580	3.49	8.39%	25.8%	2.95%
8	Spark Car Wash	8	7,049	4.70	2.21%	13.2%	0.17%
9	Wash Hounds Express Car Wash	7	8,639	4.42	1.41%	15.1%	0.59%
10	Washville Car Wash	6	3,433	4.29	2.50%	11.7%	1.58%
11	RetroClean Detailing - Jamaica	6	163	4.89	0.00%	—	0.75%
12	Shammy Shine Car Wash	6	981	4.21	3.91%	—	0.78%
13	33 East Car Wash	6	1,552	3.67	8.47%	—	1.21%
14	Bolla Wash	5	462	3.29	—	—	—
15	Duke Boyz	5	925	3.91	8.90%	—	4.11%
16	Mr. Suds Car Wash of Bay Shore	5	1,443	3.56	8.41%	18.8%	2.91%
17	Sunoco	5	231	3.62	—	—	—
18	Soaktown Express Car Wash	4	1,059	3.74	5.98%	3.3%	0.28%
19	Ultimate Express Car Wash	4	2,618	4.41	5.98%	12.0%	1.26%
20	Soft Cloth Car Wash	4	1,449	4.29	3.30%	2.3%	0.73%
21	Auto Image	4	2,931	4.86	0.07%	—	0.43%
22	SpeedyShine Car Wash	4	663	4.39	3.35%	—	0.00%
23	TRAX Car Wash	4	2,079	3.69	6.78%	8.8%	3.11%
24	Harry's Express Car Wash	3	776	4.20	4.32%	16.0%	1.62%
25	Foam & Wash Car Wash	3	1,349	4.31	2.86%	9.4%	0.57%

04 County Breakdown

Which counties have the most car washes in New York?

New York's 5,715 car washes distribute across 24 counties. Suffolk County leads with 1,012 locations (17.7%). Cross-county rating dispersion is usually narrow at this scale.

Cross-county rating dispersion: 0.63★ between the highest- and lowest-rated counties with meaningful sample size.

County	Locations	% of MSA	Reviews	Avg Rating
Suffolk County	1,012	17.7%	45,990	4.41
Kings County	462	8.1%	39,925	3.98
Nassau County	398	7.0%	37,610	4.19
Bergen County	377	6.6%	41,089	4.37
Queens County	349	6.1%	41,163	3.95
Middlesex County	343	6.0%	33,684	4.39
Westchester County	297	5.2%	30,051	4.39
Monmouth County	265	4.6%	24,639	4.50
Ocean County	257	4.5%	22,078	4.57
Morris County	238	4.2%	25,115	4.58
Essex County	222	3.9%	23,716	4.09
Passaic County	218	3.8%	34,941	4.44
Bronx County	201	3.5%	18,209	4.14
Union County	187	3.3%	32,160	4.33
Orange County	157	2.7%	11,732	4.30
Hudson County	139	2.4%	20,451	4.16
Somerset County	127	2.2%	11,002	4.30
Richmond County	126	2.2%	11,723	4.35
Rockland County	112	2.0%	6,023	4.39
New York County	100	1.7%	5,448	4.01
Sussex County	48	0.8%	3,340	4.34
Hunterdon County	41	0.7%	2,793	4.54
Putnam County	31	0.5%	3,233	4.47
Pike County	8	0.1%	949	4.15

05 Customer Experience Signals

What do customers love and complain about in New York?

The aspect grid below summarizes 164,260 AI-extracted reviews across 5,715 New York car wash locations. Each aspect lands on a -1…+1 scale (negative = customers complain more than they praise; positive = the reverse).

Staff +0.74

Wash Quality +0.68

Facility Cleanliness +0.67

Wait Time +0.55

Membership Value +0.26

Per-Wash Price +0.24

Equipment Working -0.57

06 All Locations

Where are all the car washes in the New York metro?

The complete inventory of car wash locations in the New York 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
Toyota Universe 1485 US-46	Little Falls Township, NJ	—	—	4.5	13,481	$95K
BM Motor Cars 1835 W Edgar Rd	Linden, NJ	—	—	4.5	4,514	$61K
Paragon Honda Service Center 57-06 31st Ave	Woodside, NY	—	—	4.2	4,337	$54K
Prestige Auto Spa NJ 883 Fischer Blvd	Toms River, NJ	Full Service	—	4.9	3,621	$89K
Mercedes-Benz of New Rochelle 77 E Main St	New Rochelle, NY	—	—	4.7	3,571	$85K
Lexus of Route 10 130 NJ-10 West	Whippany, NJ	—	—	4.8	3,527	$142K
Ramsey Subaru Service Center 27 McKee Dr	Mahwah, NJ	—	—	4.8	3,372	$169K
Route 22 Toyota Service & Toyota Parts 1465 N Broad St	Hillside, NJ	—	—	4.1	3,293	$68K
Wash Hounds Express Car Wash & Oil Change 2440 US-22	Union, NJ	Express Tunnel	Wash Hounds Express Car Wash	4.3	2,743	$85K
County Line Auto Body 278 Alexander Ave	Howell Township, NJ	—	—	4.9	2,482	$94K
Splash Car Wash 170 S Kensico Ave	White Plains, NY	Full Service	Splash Car Wash Express	4.6	2,466	$218K
Perfect Shine Auto Salon 1269 McBride Ave	Woodland Park, NJ	—	—	4.5	2,352	$95K
Soaring Car Wash of Elmwood Park 235 US-46	Elmwood Park, NJ	Express Tunnel	Soaring Car Wash of Elmwood Park	4.4	2,310	$71K
Paul Miller Subaru - Service 3469 US-46	Parsippany, NJ	—	—	4.9	2,278	$114K
Legend Nissan 268 Jericho Tpke	Syosset, NY	—	—	4.6	2,244	$275K
Hollywood Car Wash 488 Coney Island Ave	Brooklyn, NY	Full Service	Jomar Car Wash	3.4	2,230	$70K
ATLANTIS WASH & LUBE 1650 Bushwick Ave	Brooklyn, NY	—	—	3.9	2,006	$44K
Teddy Volkswagen 3743 Boston Rd	Bronx, NY	—	—	4.3	1,990	$48K
Splash Car Wash Express 1977 E Jericho Tpke	East Northport, NY	Full Service	Splash Car Wash Express	4.8	1,941	$118K
Lexus of Brooklyn 6502 5th Ave	Brooklyn, NY	—	—	4.0	1,851	$38K
Spark Car Wash 1720 US-46	Woodland Park, NJ	Express Tunnel	Spark Car Wash	4.6	1,788	$95K
Wash Hounds Express Car Wash 375 Myrtle Ave	Boonton, NJ	Express Tunnel	Wash Hounds Express Car Wash	4.8	1,779	$150K
Team Car Wash Piscataway 519 Stelton Rd	Piscataway, NJ	Express Tunnel	Team Express Roselle	4.5	1,769	$92K
Spark Car Wash 90 W Pond Rd	Perth Amboy, NJ	Express Tunnel	Spark Car Wash	4.8	1,725	$44K
Splash Car Wash Express 1261 Lakeland Ave	Bohemia, NY	Full Service	Splash Car Wash Express	4.7	1,718	$100K

Nearby Other NY metros

Compare New York 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.

Buffalo 385 Rochester 342 Albany 322 Syracuse 261 Kiryas Joel 245 Utica 131

Cite this page

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

APA

WashIndex. (2026, September 26). New York car wash market analysis. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/new-york

Chicago

WashIndex. "New York car wash market analysis." WashIndex. Last modified September 26, 2026. https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/new-york.

MLA

"New York car wash market analysis." WashIndex, Sep. 26, 2026, https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/new-york.

BibTeX

@misc{washindex_car_wash_markets_new_york_2026,
  title  = {{New York car wash market analysis}},
  author = {{WashIndex}},
  year   = {2026},
  month  = {Sep},
  url    = {https://washindex.com/car-wash-markets/new-york},
  urldate = {2026-09-26},
}

About this analysis

Car wash inventory for the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA CBSA is determined by point-in-polygon test against the official US Census county boundaries (TIGER/Line, 2024) for the 24 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 164,260 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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