Car washing keeps getting compared to “modern retail.” After years in car wash technology, I went looking for the comparison point. What I found: we are not simply behind. We are in transition, and the friction shows up in three predictable places.
I keep hearing it in conference hallways and on panels: “Car washing is 10 years behind.”
Sometimes it is said like a challenge. Sometimes it lands like a complaint. Either way, it is usually shorthand for something real: operators feel stuck, vendors feel pressure, and everyone wants progress to arrive faster than a construction crew on opening week.
But behind what, exactly?
If you ask five people, you get five different answers. So I tried a different approach. Instead of arguing about the label, I went looking for the reference point.
At ICA’s ROADMAP conference in Dallas, I heard the line again from a car wash executive and it sent me back into my own history. I built my career trying to modernize car wash point-of-sale (POS) systems, starting in my family’s tunnel controller business (Compuwash) and later helping bring one of the early cloud-based car wash POS platforms to market. In 2009, I sold that platform to Sonny’s, where it became Sonny’s Controls.
So when someone says “behind,” I do not hear an abstract insult. I hear a specific set of pain points that show up in software, hardware, labor, member management and the day-to-day grind of keeping a site running.
"We are not simply behind. We are in transition, and the friction shows up in three predictable places... [availability, migration, and mindset]." —Kyle Doyle
A few weeks later, I walked into the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York for the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual technology show. Retail is where people assume the “modern” playbook lives. I expected to see a world that had already solved the problems car washes complain about.
I did not. What I found was a bigger version of the same conversation: legacy systems, messy data, difficult migrations and leaders who want AI before they have a clean foundation to support it.
That matters, because it changes the diagnosis. If retailers with huge budgets and deep benches are still wrestling with the basics, then maybe “10 years behind” is not a technology timeline. Maybe it is a transition problem.
After dozens of conversations, my notes kept collapsing into three buckets. In my experience, most “we’re behind” frustration comes from one of these:
If you are an owner or operator reading this, here is the practical takeaway: these are three different problems. They require three different playbooks. When we mash them together, we end up blaming the wrong thing and buying the wrong solution.
When operators say the industry is behind, they are often pointing at one of these symptoms:
Those are all solvable. But they do not all solve the same way.
For years car washing had real availability friction. Operators did not have many viable POS options especially for subscription and multi-site needs. If you were unhappy, you were often still stuck.
Today the landscape looks different. New platforms are entering the market. Legacy providers are rebuilding or launching next-generation versions. And the surrounding ecosystem has grown: license plate recognition (LPR) cameras, marketing tools, maintenance platforms, learning management systems and more.
If “behind” is your current feeling, ask a simple question: are you frustrated because you do not have options, or because you have too many options and no clear way to choose?
Availability friction has shifted. In many cases, the problem is no longer “nothing exists.” The problem is “too much exists and it does not fit together cleanly.”
Operator moves that reduce availability friction:
This is the one that makes good operators feel like they are trapped.
At the retail show, I spoke with consultants and IT leaders who described the same pattern: companies running decades-old platforms, homegrown tools built by developers who have long since left and data scattered across systems that do not talk to each other. One technology leader told me the AI conversation is often a distraction because the real problem is the data foundation.
In car washing migration friction shows up in a few predictable places:
Operator moves that reduce migration friction:
Keep in mind that there might be some loss of subscribers through the process. Sometimes we think of a singular number of members and then compare that number pre and post migration. However, often there are members that are about to churn for various reasons. That is always happening, but you see that clearly when you shine a magnifying glass on a singular moment of migration.
Here is the hard truth: migrations are supposed to be difficult. Switching cost is real because your old system is woven into how your business runs.
This is the friction that does not show up in a demo. It shows up in what we think our business is.
For decades, our trade shows were built around equipment. Conveyor speed, chemistry, drying performance and throughput were the center of gravity. That mechanical DNA is not going away. It should not.
But the profit engine has shifted. In a subscription-driven model, the business is not only about washing cars. It is about running a retail-like experience: frictionless entry, predictable service, member retention, service recovery, staffing, uptime and data-driven decisions.
At the retail show, the biggest difference was not “better technology.” It was what the industry considered normal. POS was not a fancy cash register. It was a stable transaction core surrounded by layers: customer experience, e-commerce, loyalty, personalization, operational analytics and workflow automation.
That layered architecture matters because it decouples innovation from stability. The transaction core can be reliable and slow-changing. The experience and intelligence layers can evolve constantly without risking the entire operation.
Car washing is starting to move in that direction. Data no longer comes only from the register. It comes from cameras, payroll, reviews, equipment sensors and marketing systems.
If you still think of POS as one black box that should do everything, you will keep feeling behind. In a digital-first world, the goal is not a single perfect system. The goal is an architecture that can evolve.
Operator moves that reduce mindset friction:
"Industries do not feel behind because they lack innovation." —Kyle Doyle
After that Dallas panel, I called the executive who used the phrase and asked what he meant. His examples were not about one software feature. They were about:
That is not one problem. That is all three frictions interacting at once. It feels like being behind. But it is really the discomfort of transition.
Industries do not feel behind because they lack innovation. They feel behind when their identity shifts faster than their systems and habits.
Car washing is living a fast identity shift: from mechanical-first to digital-first, from transaction-first to membership-first, from equipment optimization to experience optimization.
That shift can feel like being 10 years behind—even when progress is real.
The better question is not “Are we behind?” It is: “Which friction is slowing us down and what is the next practical step to reduce it?”
Because we are not stuck. We are traveling. And the only way the journey gets easier is by learning how to move.