Williamsport Car Wash Market Analysis
Williamsport, PA
Data updated · May 22, 2026
A detailed read of the Williamsport car wash industry built from 3,644 Google reviews across 46 locations in 1 counties. Covers format mix, operator dominance, geographic distribution, income demographics, and customer-experience signals at the metro, county, and ZIP level.
46 car wash locations across 1 counties · dots colored by format · sized by review volume
The Williamsport metropolitan area hosts 46 car wash locations across its 1 counties — among the largest car-wash trade areas in the United States. Operating-quality signals are derived from 3,644 Google reviews, with 594 reviews processed through structured LLM extraction across 55 dimensions. The weighted-average rating across all locations is 4.14★, with a reviewer-reported damage rate of 1.52% and a membership-cancellation friction rate of 33.3% of mem-discussing reviews.
The market is highly fragmented: 41 of 46 locations (89.1%) operate as independents or single-location operators, while the top 10 chains together control 5 locations (10.9%). The largest single operator by location count is Sheetz with 4 sites in the MSA.
Of 13 locations that have been formally format-classified, the dominant concept is Detail Shop (4 sites), with strong secondary presence from Express Tunnel (2), Full Service (0), and Self-Serve Bay (1). The remaining 33 locations are unclassified — typically smaller independent operators without enough website signal for format assignment.
Published pricing across the 3 of 46 Williamsport locations with menus available: median single car wash $14 (range $14–$14), median unlimited membership $20/month (range $19.95–$39.95/mo). The cheapest unlimited membership in the metro is $19.95/mo at The Car Wash at Faxon (Basic).
See the top car wash chains in Williamsport
Ranked by location count in the metro
What does a car wash cost in the Williamsport metro?
Published menu pricing for car washes in the Williamsport metropolitan area, captured from operator websites and the WashIndex AI calling agent. 3 of 46 tracked locations have usable published pricing (7% coverage).
| Cheapest unlimited memberships in Williamsport | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Car Wash at Faxon Basic | $19.95 per mo |
| 2 | Shore Car Wash Express Monthly Wash Pass | $20 per mo |
| 3 | Ultimate Express Car and Pet Wash Unlimited Ultimate Plus | $39.95 per mo |
| Cheapest single car washes in Williamsport | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ultimate Express Car and Pet Wash Ultimate Car Wash | $14 |
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.
About the Williamsport car wash market
How many car washes are in the Williamsport metro?
+
What is the best-rated car wash in the Williamsport metro?
+
Which car wash chain has the most locations in Williamsport?
+
What is the average customer rating in the Williamsport car wash market?
+
What is the typical household income near car washes in Williamsport?
+
How much does a car wash cost in Williamsport?
+
How much does an unlimited car wash membership cost in Williamsport?
+
What is the cheapest car wash in Williamsport?
+
What kinds of car washes does Williamsport have?
The Williamsport MSA contains a wide mix of car wash formats — from express tunnels and full-service operations to detail shops and self-serve bays. The bar chart below shows how many locations of each format have been formally classified by our LLM-based format classifier (which reads each operator's own website to determine the format), with the avg Google rating per format displayed alongside the count.
The format with the highest customer rating is Detail Shop at 4.89★ across 4 locations — typical of the format, which is staffed, hand-finished, and oriented toward customers who care more about wash result than throughput. The lowest-rated format is Self-Serve Bay at 3.80★ across 1 locations. Format-level rating gaps of this size are common — different formats serve different customer occasions and have inherently different expectations.
Of the 46 total locations in the MSA, 33 (71.7%) are currently unclassified — these are typically smaller independent operators without enough website signal to determine format unambiguously. Their inclusion in the overall location count is correct, but format-level statistics below should be read as describing the classified subset only.
| Format | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage Rate | Cancel Friction |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unclassified | 33 | 71.7% | 1,019 | 4.20 | 1.35% | 0.0% |
| In-Bay Automatic | 6 | 13.0% | 1,985 | 4.02 | 3.50% | 33.3% |
| Detail Shop | 4 | 8.7% | 286 | 4.89 | 0.00% | — |
| Express Tunnel | 2 | 4.3% | 245 | 4.16 | 2.94% | 100.0% |
| Self-Serve Bay | 1 | 2.2% | 109 | 3.80 | 0.00% | — |
What is the household income near Williamsport car washes?
Each ZIP in the Williamsport MSA has been joined to IRS Statistics-of-Income data (tax year 2022, mean Adjusted Gross Income per return as the income proxy) and to the per-location Google rating dataset. The scatter below plots every car wash with at least 10 reviews against its ZIP-level income, with each dot colored by format and sized by review volume.
Across 25 qualifying locations the simple Pearson correlation between ZIP income and Google rating is 0.00 — effectively zero. Higher-income ZIPs in the MSA do not produce systematically better-rated car washes. Operating-quality signals are dominated by per-operator execution, not by neighborhood income. The mean-of-scatter location sits at $71K AGI/return and 4.19★.
Car wash count and quality by income tier
Grouping ZIPs by income tier shows how location count and average rating shift across the income distribution. The blue bars are location count per tier; the orange tick marks show the average Google rating across all car wash locations in that tier (scaled against the same y-axis).
| Income tier (mean AGI/return) | ZIPs | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Top Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $50K | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
| $50K – $75K | 7 | 32 | 3,238 | 4.13 | In-Bay Automatic (6) |
| $75K – $100K | 1 | 7 | 381 | 4.17 | Detail Shop (2) |
| $100K – $150K | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
| $150K+ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | — |
The highest-income tier ($150K+) contains 0 car washes across 0 ZIPs, with a weighted-average rating of 0.00★ — compared to 0 locations across 0 ZIPs averaging 0.00★ in the lowest-income tier (Under $50K). The middle-income tiers ($75K–$150K) tend to host the densest concentrations of express tunnels — the format that monetizes most effectively at suburban price points.
Who operates the most Williamsport car washes?
The Williamsport MSA hosts 2 different chains alongside 41 independent operators (single-location or unaffiliated sites). The table below ranks the top 25 chains by location count in the MSA, with each chain's per-MSA Google rating, reviewer-reported damage rate, and membership cancellation friction rate.
The top 2 chains together control 5 of 46 locations (10.9%) — meaning 89.1% of the MSA's car wash supply remains in the hands of smaller chains and independent operators. That fragmentation level is typical of large US metros and creates meaningful consolidation runway for active acquirers.
| # | Chain | Locations | Reviews | Avg Rating | Damage | Cancel | Upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sheetz | 4 | 1,717 | 4.02 | 0.00% | — | 0.00% |
| 2 | Ultimate Express Car Wash | 1 | 201 | 4.30 | — | — | — |
Which counties have the most car washes in Williamsport?
The Williamsport, PA CBSA spans 1 counties. The table below shows how the MSA's car wash inventory is distributed across those counties — by location count, total review volume, and weighted-average customer rating.
Lycoming County is the heart of the metro's car wash supply, hosting 46 locations (100.0%) of the 46 total. Cross-county rating dispersion is narrow , which suggests operating quality is more a function of operator execution than of county-level market dynamics.
| County | Locations | % of MSA | Reviews | Avg Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lycoming County | 46 | 100.0% | 3,644 | 4.14 |
What do customers love and complain about in Williamsport?
Aspect scores aggregate the per-review LLM extractions for 594 reviews across all 46 MSA locations. Each score is computed as (positive − negative) / (positive + negative + mixed) for that aspect, ranging from −1 (universally negative) to +1 (universally positive). Numbers above zero mean customers say more positive than negative things; below zero means the reverse.
Reading these together gives a quick read on where the metro's car wash industry stands operationally: which aspects of the experience are reliable strengths and which ones generate the most friction.
Where are all the car washes in the Williamsport metro?
The complete inventory of car wash locations in the Williamsport MSA, ranked by review volume. Each row shows the operator name, address, format classification (where determined), chain affiliation (when part of a multi-location operator), Google rating, total review count, county, and the IRS mean-AGI-per-return for the ZIP it sits in. Locations with fewer than 10 reviews on Google appear without a rating column populated.
We're showing the top 25 by review volume; the full set of 46 locations is available in the underlying dataset for users requesting a custom market study.
| Location | City | Format | Chain | Rating | Reviews | ZIP AGI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sheetz 330 Westminster Dr | Williamsport, PA | In-Bay Automatic | Sheetz | 4.2 | 1,261 | $63K |
| The Car Wash at Faxon 18 Liberty Ln | Williamsport, PA | In-Bay Automatic | — | 4.0 | 235 | $63K |
| Sheetz 105 Maynard St | Williamsport, PA | In-Bay Automatic | Sheetz | 3.2 | 234 | $63K |
| Blue Lion Car Wash 810 Washington Blvd | Williamsport, PA | — | — | 3.9 | 226 | $63K |
| Ultimate Express Car and Pet Wash 1112 Washington Blvd | Williamsport, PA | Express Tunnel | Ultimate Express Car Wash | 4.3 | 201 | $63K |
| Mazzullo's Premier Auto Spa 433 W 3rd St | Williamsport, PA | Detail Shop | — | 4.9 | 194 | $63K |
| Penton Automotive 579 Old US Hwy 220 | Jersey Shore, PA | — | — | 4.8 | 121 | $62K |
| Sheetz 7775 US-220 | Linden, PA | In-Bay Automatic | Sheetz | 3.8 | 117 | $62K |
| Keisers Auto Detailing 866 Fairfield Rd | Montoursville, PA | — | — | 5.0 | 114 | $90K |
| Early Bird Carwash 89 Maynard St | Williamsport, PA | Self-Serve Bay | — | 3.8 | 109 | $63K |
| Sheetz 45 Muncy Creek Blvd | Muncy, PA | In-Bay Automatic | Sheetz | 4.0 | 105 | $75K |
| The Carwash At Broad Street 115 Broad St | Montoursville, PA | — | — | 3.1 | 95 | $90K |
| Montoursville Laser Wash 629 N Loyalsock Ave | Montoursville, PA | — | — | 3.5 | 81 | $90K |
| Muncy CarWash 181 E Water St | Muncy, PA | — | — | 3.8 | 77 | $75K |
| Sweitzer's Auto Sales 321 N Main St | Jersey Shore, PA | — | — | 4.1 | 69 | $62K |
| CS Detailing, LLC (Ceramic Coating | Auto Detailing) 339 E Water St | Hughesville, PA | — | — | 5.0 | 64 | $66K |
| Wave Detail Co. | Premium Detailing and Ceramic Coatings 190 Broad St | Montoursville, PA | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 63 | $90K |
| Shore Car Wash 1200 Allegheny St | Jersey Shore, PA | Express Tunnel | — | 3.5 | 44 | $62K |
| Mo's Carpet Shampooing Services & Auto Detailing 414 E Central Ave | South Williamsport, PA | — | — | 5.0 | 43 | $61K |
| Broad Street Carwash 190 Broad St | Montgomery, PA | In-Bay Automatic | — | 3.8 | 33 | $61K |
| Right-A-Way Auto Detail 1631 PA-405 | Hughesville, PA | — | — | 4.7 | 30 | $66K |
| Blaise Alexander Car Wash 221 Alexander Dr | Muncy, PA | — | — | 3.8 | 19 | $75K |
| Sunset Detailing LLC 50 Griffith Rd | Muncy, PA | Detail Shop | — | 5.0 | 19 | $75K |
| iClean Automotive | , PA | — | — | 5.0 | 12 | — |
| Superior Auto Detailing 1025 Carey Hill Rd | Montoursville, PA | — | — | 4.7 | 11 | $90K |
About this analysis
Car wash inventory for the Williamsport, PA 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 594 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.