Quality options
Brett Bunston, president and co-founder of Deltic, who partnered with Thind on other Klassic location upgrades with MacNeil Wash Systems, got fully behind Thind’s vision. “He wanted to turn the car wash into a much richer, higher-quality experience,” says Bunston.
One of the biggest challenges to the design was giving customers the option, in the same tunnel, to choose a high-speed soft-touch foam brush wash or a touchless wash: Offering both at the highest standard in the same tunnel was an opportunity to set the location apart from competitors.
“I’ve done dual washes before, but inevitably there is always some element of compromise,” says Bunston. “That is because a perfect touchless tunnel runs at a certain line speed and a perfect brush tunnel might run at a faster line speed to get the same cleaning outcome. But we were able to find a happy medium and really get excellent results for both.”
The touchless wash features a high-pressure spray system from Petit Auto Wash Equipment in Norton, Ohio, called The Tunnel Accutrac 360-t. With as little as 30 inches of space between vehicles, the system can clean up to 180 cars per hour depending on the set-up. Klassic’s line speed is about 130 vehicles pers hour for both touchless and touch.
“It is relatively new technology and the Accutrac 360-t may be the only one in Canada,” says Bunston. Compare that to most touchless roll over washes, “which average 15 cars,” he notes.
Further down the tunnel is equipment from Truck Wash Technologies out of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. “They have been specializing in big rig and trailer washing for years and have adopted some of their profiling technology to car wash tunnels,” says Bunston. “Their equipment enables the car wash to sense the height of the vehicle and turn on and off the nozzles, so we are not wasting water by spraying overtop the car. The profiling also gives us the ability to vary the wash pressure based on how close the nozzles are to the vehicle and thereby reduce the risk of damages.”
The Dunlop location also provides 16 free vacuum stalls upon exit, a trademark perk of Klassic. “We were the first car wash to bring the free vacuum model to Canada from the U.S. at our Toronto location around 2005 and it worked really well in attracting customers,” says Thind. “Now we offer free vacuums with washes at all of our locations.”