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Doing it His Way
By Timothy Denman

Not every piece of equipment is right for every location — sometimes nothing on the market is ideal. What is an operator to do when he can’t find the equipment that is perfect for his wash?

If that operator is Ed Walker the solution is simple: build your own.

Walker builds his own self-serve equipment, and admits that the driving force behind his local manufacturing business is pride.

“I like things done my way,” Walker says. “There is always something about someone else’s equipment that I don’t like. When you build it yourself you can have it anyway you want.”

In addition to manufacturing the self-serve equipment for his own four washes, Walker has made equipment for quite a few washes in his home state of Texas. Walker says the equipment, branded NEW MFG, is like “something built back in the ‘80s, when they built things simple.”

He believes self-serve equipment doesn’t need a bunch of electronics and monitoring systems to be effective. It just has to be dependable, and easy to use and maintain.

Building equipment is Walker’s second job, his primary occupation is owning and operating his four washes in and around Cedar Park, TX.

Connie’s Car Wash started in 1978 when Ed’s father, Noble, built the family’s first wash in Cedar Park. The flagship Connie’s Car Wash, named after Ed’s mom, is located in Leander, TX and sports seven self-serve bays and one in-bay automatic.

The wash was a ground-up project completed five years ago and features Ed’s self-serve equipment, a Belanger automatic, an ice machine, a shaved ice stand, and two vending machines.

Credit cards are accepted in all seven self-serve bays, and half of Connie’s self-serve customers take advantage of the convenient option.

“We have a Hamilton system here,” Walker says. “They offer an OEM kit. I built my meter box around it. It is a great system. It can process the payment before the customers can even get the wand in their hands.”

Walker says credit card acceptance has made him the busiest self-serve in the area. “The reason people are at my wash is the credit card machines. If you talk to anybody that uses my car wash the first thing they are going to say is they love the fact that we accept credit cards.”

In addition to NEW MFG’s self-serve equipment, Walker is also a Belanger in-bay distributor and has a Vector machine in his automatic bay.