Chemical Companies

[Overachiever]

Just curious on what peoples thoughts are on what role the chemical company should be in at the car wash.

When I spoke to Ver-tech at the car wash expo, mentioned I wanted to design a new menu with their chemicals, they basically said they'd help me do just that. Mailed me some chemical, titrated it, but never gave me a cost per car (as of yet). I was sort of thinking they should know off the top of their head the order of operations of what chemicals go on in what order, whether its high/low or low/high, etc. How to calculate cost per car in an IBA, etc.

They seem pretty aloof. Also since its such a big company, thought they could just make a call, and give me something copy paste. Am I asking for too much? My current setup was something I just made up on my own. I get that they might not have the expertise to actually program the machine, but I sort of expected them to have an idea of how it should be programmed for the best results. Like by not doing DIY Kleen-Rite, aren't I paying for their expertise on this subject?

 

[liftheavy]

vertech was a very good company, but to me it appears they are suffering from growing too fast. i remember like 3 years ago they didn't even have means of distribution outside of TN.

couple years back they quoted me i believe .60/car, and i ended up separating ways with them because my blended cost with another company was far cheaper. their call to fame is reclaim compatibility and i don't like to use reclaim at most of my facilities so it just didnt make sense for us.

truth of the matter is all chemistry basically do the same thing. in a dog eat dog world, no companies can afford to provide crappy products and expect to survive or thrive, just like most equipment manufacturers can't expect to survive if their equipment sucks.

some companies will snub mom and pops and prioritize big partners. it's unfortunate, but there's plenty of selections to go thru.

dont trust the hype -- shop around with your local distributor and pick the one that can come readily to your site and can provide volumetrics and cost per cost spreadsheet.

 

[OurTown]

vertech was a very good company, but to me it appears they are suffering from growing too fast. i remember like 3 years ago they didn't even have means of distribution outside of TN.

couple years back they quoted me i believe .60/car, and i ended up separating ways with them because my blended cost with another company was far cheaper. their call to fame is reclaim compatibility and i don't like to use reclaim at most of my facilities so it just didnt make sense for us.

truth of the matter is all chemistry basically do the same thing. in a dog eat dog world, no companies can afford to provide crappy products and expect to survive or thrive, just like most equipment manufacturers can't expect to survive if their equipment sucks.

some companies will snub mom and pops and prioritize big partners. it's unfortunate, but there's plenty of selections to go thru.

dont trust the hype -- shop around with your local distributor and pick the one that can come readily to your site and can provide volumetrics and cost per cost spreadsheet.

Did Ver-Tech recently move to Minnesota?

 

[liftheavy]

Did Ver-Tech recently move to Minnesota?

i have no idea, i had a brief relationship with them in 2023 testing out their chemicals for about 4-6 months and never really kept up with them afterwards. in 2022 i reached out to them and they told me they couldn't because they had no distributors out there.

i've tried NCS, vertech, stinger, arcadian, dimond shine, chemquest, and qualchem in the past and i honestly can't say any of them really jumped out at me ever.

edit: and simonize.

and also don't always trust their volumetrics test either, its very easy to run your own test using a small scale. i remember when i was first starting off one of the companies above whom i won't specifically point out had me doing $2.00/car blended cost and i was like, "uh... something's wrong..." and their rep was like "nah it's good" and i learned how to do my own test after almost a year of bleeding money and found my triple foam was outputting 5x the supposed amount. great car quality tho, lmao.

 

[AnalyticWash]

Where are you located? Highly recommend you try Synergy. Their newer pre-soaks crush it.

 

[Overachiever]

I'm in northern IL, which is why I figured I should give Ver-tech a shot, since they are in MN, we likely deal with similar soil and weather conditions. Thought their chemicals might be engineered to clean better in my area.

I'm not unhappy with my hodge podge of random chemicals I am using from Kleen Rite, just thought maybe another chemical company would come in and be less lazy than me, give me something that works, and be able to tell me close to what it's costing me per car.

It's been getting increasingly harder for me to find people who are competent, where I don't need to hound them or babysit them to do the jobs they are getting paid to do.

Anyway, they got my blood boiling today because they keep calling to ask when I'm ordering more when all they did was come in, change my tips so I use more chemical that I was before. They think they can somehow give me an estimated cost per car based on the titration they did. I'm like bro, I'm not an express tunnel, for all you know I'm doing 10 passes of presoak on the slowest possible setting. When my machine can be configured to do anything I want how can you tell me what its costing me if you didn't actually test it.

I put this WW razor edge in like 7-8 years ago and never bought a menu board, people just show up and press a button, they never ask what they are getting, they make their decision 100% on experimentation and price LOL... was trying to change that, figured using a real chemical company would turn something I've been too lazy to do into something that gets done. Hard to know how that has affected me but the razor was a huge improvement to the business.

 

[Keno]

There are other places to get menus made if that is one of your main objectives

 

[Overachiever]

There are other places to get menus made if that is one of your main objectives

I put a downpayment down on a menu board from Ahearn, Ver-tech had a partnership with them. Anyway seems like the perfect opportunity for a chemical company to come in. Blank slate, they can use as many of the features my machine has as they want, as many chemicals as they want. Just give me the menu and tell me its economical.

 

[liftheavy]

I put a downpayment down on a menu board from Ahearn, Ver-tech had a partnership with them. Anyway seems like the perfect opportunity for a chemical company to come in. Blank slate, they can use as many of the features my machine has as they want, as many chemicals as they want. Just give me the menu and tell me its economical.

i mean, as far as menu goes they go pretty generic so i dont know if you need chem rep's help... presoak... lava bath... triple foam... carnauba wax... ceramic... graphene... tire shine...

at one point i just started making up stuff like i called my lava bath rainbow foam because i had RGBW light on it. customers don't know every minute details of your chemicals nor do they really care so long as it gets it clean, shiny, and dry.

i used to use a lot of premier for signages, but lately i've been ordering off abc wash system, which i believe was formed by former sonny's mr foamer people.