And the cause for their spread has been widely and publicly known for years: somebody found out that these things print cash. You own the land, you pay for one or two employees on-site max. Once PE woke up to the “strategy,” it was game on.
PE gets excited and overdoes it, wealth extraction hearkens enshittification, corner car washes are the new dollar store.
So I almost didn’t read past the subtitle, what’s actually new here? Oh:
“The omnipresence of the car wash in American life may be underappreciated: There are twice as many car wash outlets as McDonald’s and Starbucks locations combined.”
That’s almost unbelievable. Twice as many as McDonalds+Starbucks!
(Another concern: Who’s on the hook for all the PFAS cleanups when the scheme goes bust? Because you know it won’t be PE.)