Large Market Heavy Truck and Equipment Washing - Responsibly
By Olli Lamminen

Pete Hunter, the owner of Time to Shine Car Wash in Alpena, MI has been operating two in-bay automatic washes with four detail bays since January 2003. Alpena is a small town of about 11,000 people located on the shore of Lake Huron in Northern Michigan and is known for its natural beauty, lakefronts, and expensive summer homes.

A truck enters the touchless wash tunnel.

Hunter is also a well-known general contractor in northeast Michigan. His company, Hunter Construction, has built several car wash facilities in the area. In neighboring Gaylord, another small Northern Michigan City, 45 miles west of Alpena, he built a facility identical to his own for Robert Spragg. Both of these car washes have turned out to be solid investments for their owners and are doing well. Both the Alpena and Gaylord sites were supplied and installed by GinSan of Grand Rapids.

Although Gaylord and Alpena are mainly known as tourist centers, they also have a heavy industrial side to their economies. Alpena, and the surrounding area, have some of the largest lime quarries in the country - Gaylord is in the middle of Northern Michigan's oil and gas fields. Both of these industries use heavy trucking and construction equipment. Soon after opening their car wash sites, Pete and Bob realized that there was potential for a truck and heavy equipment wash in both towns. In Northern Michigan there are no existing permanent truck or heavy equipment wash facilities. Most truck and equipment washing takes place outside and is done manually.

In February 2004, Pete and Bob started taking a serious look at various options available and
how they could benefit from the heavy truck and equipment wash demand in their area. They visited truck wash sites from Utah and New Mexico to Arkansas and Illinois. It soon became apparent that all of the existing automated or manual truck washes and systems were solely designed to wash only trucks and buses. Very few, if any, were designed to answer all of the heavy-duty washing requirements that existed in Northern Michigan.

As a construction company owner, Hunter was painfully aware of the washing difficulties faced by most contractors when it was time to wash a bulldozer, an excavator, or a front-end loader. After consulting the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), the state environmental agency, it became apparent that all heavy equipment had to be washed within a contained area where waste residue can be collected and properly disposed of. The amount of oil and grease used to lubricate and service a large bulldozer is measured in the gallons. Similarly, when washing such a vehicle, a large amount of oil and grease is removed, and unless contained, it is released into the environment around the wash site.

Most environmental agencies know that washing one large dozer is the equivalent to washing hundreds of trucks in terms of potential hydrocarbon pollution. Environmental enforcement in this field has been practically non-existent and even now is in its infancy.

Lookin' good! The newly clean truck is ready to once again hit the road. Below: An excavator before cleaning and...

The limitations which have been imposed on most mobile wash operators in the last few years
(preventing them from washing in outside locations which drain into the local storm sewer system) have not yet been fully been enforced in the heavy equipment washing business.

Cleaning a large bulldozer such as Caterpillar D55 can take one man more than 8 hours if done manually. This cleaning typically does not meet any of the environmental regulations. According to the DEQ, monitoring and enforcing proper heavy equipment washing is difficult. Most often it takes place on construction sites whenever the need arises and in most areas there simply are no alternatives for contractors. Realizing this, Pete Hunter decided that his future truck wash facility would also have to be able to address heavy equipment washing in an environmentally safe way.

In planning the commercial truck and heavy equipment wash facility for Alpena and Gaylord, it soon became obvious that this was to be a true pioneering exercise. In small towns like these - outside the main truck routes and heavy urban areas - no one had ever ventured to build an automated truck wash facility, nor had anyone previously incorporated a truly effective heavy equipment wash bay into an automatic truck wash plan. This did not deter Pete Hunter from proceeding with his plans.

Hunter worked with InterClean Equipment of Ann Arbor, MI to develop a smaller version of a truck wash facility that InterClean Equipment Inc. had designed and manufactured for a customer in Las Vegas, NV. The key factors in the design criteria were that the facility had to wash all types of heavy vehicles at a rate of 20 trucks per hour without the use of manual labor and that it be able to accommodate heavy construction equipment in the adjoining detail wash bay. The detail bay was designed to reduce the average 6-8 hour bulldozer wash time to 20-30 minutes for one employee.

InterClean Equipment Inc. completed the design in early March 2004 and the equipment was ordered. Hunter broke ground at the beginning of April, received the equipment in mid-May and opened for business the third of June. The whole project was completed in a record time of three months - from conception to Grand Opening. This in itself is an amazing accomplishment considering that during these three months, Hunter obtained all applicable permits and relocated the existing building that stood in the way of the future truck wash. Besides being the fastest completed truck wash project in the country, it also soon became apparent that this was to be the biggest truck wash ever built in such a small town.

During the process - you need more than a stool to reach the top of this one!

In spite of the wash's remote location, Hunter Construction did not cut any corners in construction. The building came from Royal Building Systems. The system is totally computerized and is connected to an InterClean diagnostic server in Ann Arbor via an IT link. The facility is totally winterized and is ready to meet the harsh Northern Michigan winter conditions.

The Grand Opening was held June 3, 2004. During opening day ceremonies, over 80 trucks were washed and over 1,000 people visited the site.

The name given to the new facility describes the operation well: "Touchless Extreme Truck Wash." Hunter charges $20 for a small truck or tractor and $33 for a tractor-trailer combination. A majority of his customers are large tandem dump trucks carrying lime and cement from the area mines. No detailing or prepping is done in the automatic bay. A standard wash time is about 3 minutes and two trucks can be going through the wash bay simultaneously. Pete has already established accounts with most of the local trucking companies, municipal operations, bus and school companies, and heavy equipment operators.

The detail bay has an appealing potential. The national average charge to wash a large dozer or excavator is as high as $600, requiring one man more than 10 hours to complete. Pete charges an average of between $200 and $300 for a large bulldozer or excavator. This type of washing requires little or no soap, uses only recycled water at about 300 gpm, and takes one man about 15 to 25 minutes to complete. Even in a small town like Alpena, the potential for heavy equipment washing could be two to three per day. The detail bay is also used for trailer washouts, for boat washing and for any manual truck washing or polishing that drivers may require - at an additional charge.

Collection of all dirt from dump trucks and heavy equipment washing is done in a 35,000 gallon settling basin that can be emptied with equipment Hunter Construction uses in its everyday business. Pete Hunter estimates that an average dump truck leaves about 300 pounds of dirt in his wash bay and settling pits and a large Caterpillar D55 can easily leave over 3,000 pounds of dirt. The operation will need to be closed for only 4 hours for pit cleaning when the dirt build-up in the settling basin reaches 12,000 gallons.

The new facility uses InterClean anti-turbulent filtration water-recycling technology, combined with the latest bio-remediation technologies, and can produce up to 1,000 gallons of filtered water per minute. The same filtration system provides water for both the automatic and manual detail bays.

The second location in Gaylord will open in the fall of 2004. The design concept will be nearly identical to Alpena's.

The construction of the Touchless Extreme Truck Wash is a bold step in a small Northern Michigan town. It offers a unique opportunity for both large trucking and mining companies to wash their fleets and equipment in an environmentally safe manner, thus avoiding huge potential environmental liabilities. In addition, the DEQ can now direct companies to these locations making it easier to enforce such regulations.

Olli Lamminen is vice president of sales at InterClean Equipment Inc. of Ann Arbor, MI and can be contacted via e-mail at sales@interclean.com.