Mark Ellis, president of the 5-unit Southland Auto Wash, doesn’t mince words. His auto washes that dot the greater Grand Rapids area in Michigan did not earn the honor of “Best Car Wash in Grand Rapids” four years in a row from Grand Rapids Magazine by merely keeping up with the competition. Southland also won the area’s Chamber of Commerce award for Retail Business of the Year for 2007.

Southland is way ahead of the typical car wash business with something Mark calls “the EZPass for car washes. The only difference between FastPass and the EZPass is that EZPass has a more powerful reader to read at long distances as cars drive through the tollbooth at a high speed.”

The FastPass is part of the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) revolution that is taking the auto wash industry by storm, earning the RFID tags designed specifically for use by the car wash industry the Trendsetter Trend Award for 2008.

The EZPass, which got off to a bumpy start two decades ago, is now increasingly accepted as the way to travel on U.S. highways, bridges and tunnels where a toll payment is involved. Over the years, customers realized that the EZPass lanes were faster, because customers weren’t stopping to fumble for money or tokens and toll attendants weren’t slowly doling out change and paper receipts. EZPass owners just zip through. Smiling.

In rush hour, it reduces the wait and reduces wasted fossil fuels from idling cars.

It, in many ways, acclimated consumers to the idea of driving into a car wash automated tunnel without having to get out to pay a teller or rolling down a window to figure out a touch screen. The driver just drives slowly up to the reader or sensor mounted overhead and waits about two seconds for the automated arm to lift, allowing entry into the tunnel.

A tag, packed with a microchip and an antenna not much larger than the shopper and club membership ID tags people string on their key chains, is affixed to the lower left side of a windshield. It is held on with an adhesive designed to detach the antenna from the chip, making the tag unreadable if someone tries to remove or steal it.

The reader scans the tag, identifies the car and type of wash desired, and signals the automated arm and the wash equipment. DRB’s FastPass, a wireless acceptance technology, is designed to work with the company’s SiteWatch Xpress Pay Terminal.

A couple of minutes later, after entering the terminal, the vehicle is back on the road again, sparkling clean.

“Most people don’t want to spend a lot of time in a car wash,” Joe Fucini, Market Specialist for DRB Systems, stated. The company is one of the largest purveyors of the RFID for the car wash industry. “The washes we work with hire our products to do a job. That’s our whole mission. We provide solutions to move people through the car wash faster. The kiosks, where people simply rolled down a window, were an improvement over previous systems. Now, FastPass works faster.”

Ironically, he points out, it helps cars with RFID tags and those without. “The customer without a tag used to have to wait behind another car for two or three minutes while a transaction with a teller or kiosk was going on. Now, the car ahead goes through in a couple seconds. The RFID system keeps people from driving away.”

“This is a positive feedback cycle,” Mr. Fucini said. “The more people who use it, the faster the line moves. That’s why we developed it. We want things to improve the carwash experience. It’s all about speed.”

He claims that more than 200 car washes across the country are already using the system. It is especially popular east of the Mississippi and in Texas where automated wash tunnels are more plentiful.

Most of the businesses that use DRB Systems’ FastPass marry the system to an automatic re-charge module that automatically bills the customer’s credit card on a monthly or annual cycle.

“People who use professional carwashes tend to be professionals who are affluent,” said Mr. Fucini. “Time, to them, is more valuable than money. They want a clean car, fast.”

The company also offers flexibility in how billing is handled. Some businesses, he said, prefer to bill clients monthly and allow them to come as often as they wish, even daily, or a pre-arranged number of times during the month. Some will bill all clients on the same day of the month, or on the same date a client signed up.

“Speed and simplicity is our motivator!"

“We were the first wash to set up and use the FastPass from DRB Systems,” Mr. Ellis noted. “We’ve set it up in three of our locations, in all three lanes. Some companies used FastPass in one lane and it’s the ‘cool place to go.’ We want every line to keep moving.”

Southland converted several thousand members of the Clean Car Club, a previous loyalty club, to its Unlimited Pass, a new FastPass loyalty program that provides discounts for frequent washes. It already boasts over 6,000 members.

There are two different Unlimited Passes. The Express Signature Pass, costing a customer $29.99 a month, provides a $13 value exterior wash at the company’s FastPass locations. A customer can use the service as often as desired.

The company also inaugurated the Full Service Signature Pass for $44.99 a month. The customer’s credit cards are recharged on a monthly basis.

It also helps the company manage the billing for “house accounts.” Southland sends statements to 30 to 40 companies with fleets of cars each month. By reading the RFID and tracking the data, Southland can provide the corporate customer with a statement listing the activity of each van at the wash, including the date, time of wash and location. “It took the mistakes out of billing,” Mr. Ellis discovered.

Classic Auto Wash is leading the pack in the Allen Park area of Michigan. Owner Todd Christopher has a sparkling operation featuring two tunnels and three self-wash bays.

“Classic installed the system on our exterior express car wash last October,” Mr. Christopher said. “We were a test site for the ‘R Module, the first to do automatic recharge.’”

He observed the RFID concept “has been around a few years,” but he likes the impact it is having on the bottom line. “A customer signs up for the monthly program. On the first of every month, the computer pulls a set amount off the customer’s credit card and gives us cash flow, until the customer ends participation in the program.”

“It’s been working really well. Business is up 10% and it evens things out with the climate and weather we have here. $6 is the base price for a one-time wash here. The basic monthly program is $24.99.”

“People love the idea of paying just once a month, and going as often as they want. Some do wash 18 or 19 times a month, but it all balances out.”

Since the program began, more than 420 customers have signed up.

“Almost all the glitches are worked out now,” he noted. “I like being on the ground floor of research.”