Writer / Jon Shoulders
Photography Provided
Have you ever wanted to get the inside of your car professionally cleaned but realized with frustration that you didn’t have hours to spare for sitting and waiting at a car wash facility? Crew Carwash’s new Xpress Interior Clean service on Tegler Drive in Noblesville provides an answer to that dilemma — an eight-minute answer, to be exact.
“We’ve always concentrated on the outside of the car for the last 40 years, and it’s exciting to get back to the inside with this innovative approach,” says Sally Grant, the executive vice president of Crew Carwash whose grandfather founded the company back in 1948 in Fort Wayne.
The approach Grant refers to is simple yet effective. The company installed a conveyor belt that runs the length of the new building, which sits separate from the exterior car wash, allowing the staff to continually hand-clean the cars that enter — up to four at a time. Vacuums that hang from the ceiling, towel warming and floor mat cleaning stations and rolling bins for clean and used towels all facilitate Crew’s quick interior cleaning process, and customers can relax in a space near the end of the conveyor belt that includes chairs and a restroom while their car is serviced.
The facility allows Crew employees to service up to four cars at once inside the building, and have each and every car finished in about eight minutes.
“We’re very excited about this concept, and I think our customers in Indiana will be excited too — it fits right in with our brand of clean, fast and friendly,” says Grant, adding that the company retained Hamilton Designs and Compass Construction Group for the planning, design and construction process that started last May. Crew held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on December 20 with Noblesville Mayor John Ditslear in attendance after a soft opening in late November.
“My grandfather, who started the company, is 91 now, and he visited recently to see this new site and was blown away,” Grant says. “He started with full service back in 1948, but then the company got away from it and quit doing full service in 1978. It was neat for him to see this place, and he realized this was a whole new way to do interior cleaning.”
The company, which currently operates 31 locations all in the Hoosier state, went to great lengths for research. A few employees, including Jerry White, general manager at the Noblesville location, traveled to Germany for two weeks to study the type of system that makes the new service work, long before construction on the Noblesville location began.
“We’re kind of replicating the process they use over there, with the conveyor belt and high volume, quick-pace car wash system,” White says. “Myself and another employee actually worked on a car wash line there for most of the two weeks. They open up for the day and will typically do 80 cars. It was pretty impressive, and it’s fun to bring that type of system here.”
Grant stresses that the Xpress Interior Clean service is not a complete interior detailing, but includes windows, floor mats, door jambs, dashboard, console, cup holders and vacuuming.
“The training was maybe the biggest challenge throughout this process because we didn’t have a place where we could train our associates until we were ready to open, and so we’re all still learning but it’s going great,” she adds.
The service is $20 with any exterior wash purchase, and the company is in the process of developing an unlimited Xpress Interior Clean program for a flat fee. Grant says Crew has preliminary plans to open additional Xpress Interior Clean facilities and will monitor the success of the Noblesville location prior to finalizing plans for more locations.
“We’re going to see how it goes here, and if we see that customers are finding the value of it, we’ve identified about five other locations in the Indianapolis area where we can do the same thing,” Grant says.
Crew Carwash is located at 13425 Tegler Drive in Noblesville. Call 317-776-0936 or visit crewcarwash.com for more information.
