Originally posted -May 29, 2013
Clearly, not everybody wants – or needs – to go to a self-service laundry. However, there are some items that almost everyone needs to get cleaned once in a while that would best be handled by a professionally equipped laundry.
One such item is a comforter, and many of today’s laundry owners have turned comforter cleaning into sizable segments of their wash-dry-fold business. Of course, this is something we have discussed in detail in past columns.
However, another somewhat similar item is a car mat. In Minnesota, where my store is located, the area drycleaners have regularly promoted car mat cleaning (much like drycleaners everywhere promote comforter cleaning).
This is a service that the laundry industry in general has not promoted particularly well to the public. But, once I saw my local drycleaners promoting car mat cleaning, I quickly followed suit and began advertising this service at my store as well.
Once a year in the spring, I’ll run a car mat cleaning special. After all, self-service laundries can do a phenomenal job of cleaning these mats. And homeowners certainly aren’t going to want to put their car mats into their residential washers and dryers. Most home washers and dryers feature pumps, and the type of dirt and grime that traditionally come off of car mats can really grind up a pump. Therefore, people really shouldn’t be washing their car mats in their washers and dryers at home. They should be using a commercial washer that has a drain valve, like the washers at a self-service laundry.
With commercial washing machines, the mechanical action they provide will do a much better job of cleaning car mats than even taking them to a car wash and power washing them. That extra mechanical action, beyond just the water and the chemistry, really gets the mats significantly cleaner.
On the laundry owner’s end, cleaning car mats doesn’t require anything special. If you decide to take on this added business, you will need to obtain some type of degreaser. Personally, I like Formula 409, but there are other great over-the-counter products you can use; or else purchase a quality degreaser from your local chemical distributor.
Above all, be sure not to use anything too harsh or that features a petroleum solvent, as most of the car mats you’ll be cleaning are made of rubber – and a petroleum solvent will actually break down that rubber.
One of the best aspects of cleaning car mats is the fact that they’re not designed to hold dirt and grease. In fact, they’re designed to be washed and cleaned off easily. So, it doesn’t take a lot to make them look brand new again.
Typically, most of the stains on car mats are oil, grease and dirt – so something simple like Formula 409 works well. Occasionally, you’ll encounter soda stains or similar types of spots, which may require an acid to remove. But, for the most part, higher pH detergents or solvents do a great job.
The reality of the matter is that they take about five minutes of labor. Everything has to be pretreated and sprayed down. However, then you simply run the mats through the washer, let it do its thing and then toss them into a dryer for a few minutes. The real contact time with a person is only a few minutes.
Most car mats dry quickly. At my store, we put them in our dryers for about five to 10 minutes and then air-dry them the rest of the way – because they don’t hold very much moisture so they don’t take long to dry. In fact, if all you do is hang them out, they will dry completely in about an hour or two.
Of course, if you receive a large number of orders at the same time, you need to keep them well marked and separated so that you know which mats are whose. For these situations, perhaps consider some sort of tagging system, similar to a drycleaning tagging system.
But, all in all, car mats are quite simple to clean. Yet, I see drycleaners in my market getting $15 to $20 to clean a set of car mats.
For us, spring is our busiest time for car mat cleaning. On average, we’ll do about 70 sets. We’re not extremely aggressive in going after this business, but for about three months out of the year, we’ll get some pretty decent extra business just from these mats.
It’s easy money. Why wouldn’t you do this for, let’s say, $10? Honestly, if I could do them all day long, I would. And if nothing else, by promoting that your store cleans car mats, you may even get some new customers to come in and use your laundromat, just to do their mats themselves.
