By: Anthony Analetto
Originally Published in AutoLaundry Magazine
Doing everything you can to create a safe environment for your employees isn’t only ethical, it’s profitable. The pace of a car wash can become hectic. Each day it seems customers demand and expect faster service from every retail business. The problem often overlooked is that faster movement of cars and people in the same area can be a recipe for disaster if not done carefully. Attention to training, management, signage, and site planning can help avoid tragedy; here are a few ideas to start with.
Driver Training & Certification Program
Set very specific requirements as to who at your site is permitted to move a customer’s car. Train them. Test them. Certify them, and differentiate them from the rest of your staff. I’ve seen some operators use red vests, baseball caps, and distinct shirts. Whatever you use, your manager must be able to know with a quick glance, without thinking, that whoever is driving a car has been certified to do so.
Driver certification can include many things. At a bare minimum, you must verify that they possess a valid driver’s license, have passed a drug screening, and can drive both automatic and manual transmission vehicles. A safe wash will use those base qualities to vet candidates eligible to receive special driver certification. All certified drivers must be trained and able to demonstrate complete understanding of vehicle stacking and moving procedures. In addition, they should be aware of all cars with special considerations and know proper handling procedures.
Some vehicles require additional care when moving. Every wash must devise a list of them and the necessary action to alert all people on the property to the potential danger. Visor clips, steering wheel covers, or hazard lights are some common signals used. Vehicles that warrant extra care include those with modifications common for driver education or handicapped operation, as well as cars with a documented history of sudden acceleration. Regional and national car wash associations are excellent sources for makes and models that demand caution when on your property.
The last component of a driver certification program is to make sure it’s treated seriously. It is advised to provide additional compensation or some benefit such as free uniforms to certified drivers. Equally, managers must fully appreciate that failure to adhere to these procedures can result in serious injury.
Bollards Equal Safety
Bollards are steel pipes embedded into the ground and filled with concrete. Used for years to provide protective barriers around gas pumps, vended vacuums, and building entrances, they can also be used to provide a safe place to stand for attendants at your wash. Flex-serve and Express-Exterior washes are increasingly installing them on the driver side of the conveyor entrance. Attendants stand safely behind the post as they guide customers onto the conveyor. Full-serve washes are using Bollards to provide safe areas to work in vacuum lanes, finishing areas, or anywhere cars and people are both moving around. For anyone who reads my column regularly, you’ve probably realized I strongly recommend against any manual vehicle prep. For those who insist on using labor instead of the many available equipment options for this function, Bollards can again be used to provide a safe separation between prep attendants and cars entering the conveyor.
Eliminate Unnecessary Movement
Every time a customer or employee moves a car at your site, there is the potential for an accident. To improve safety, move the car as few times as necessary. Whenever possible, use the customer to move it. Express-Exteriors are designed so that the customer drives through the wash and either exits directly or to free vacuums before leaving. Flex-Serves are similar in that they are normally laid out so that customers who select interior services are guided into a predetermined bay in the aftercare center. They then drive their own car away from the spot where they left it once services are complete. Safety problems can arise at Flex-Serves where land or other considerations require an attendant to move the car, and Full-Serves where an employee drives vehicles on or off the conveyor.
When having attendants move cars is unavoidable, do everything possible to reduce the distance and number of times it occurs. Moves should never happen more than twice. For this to occur, the car must be vacuumed where the customer leaves it, and moved once to the conveyor entrance. It is then driven a second time from the conveyor exit to the finishing area where services are performed and the customer drives out of the wash. Too often, cars are unnecessarily moved short distances at both the entrance and exit of a car wash. This jostling of cars is unsafe, inefficient, and avoidable with training and signage to “fill the grid”.
Fill the Grid
To efficiently and safely move cars through your wash they must move in and out of grids in an exact pattern. Everything must be predictable. Every person at the wash must know where the next car will be going. If you can’t ask any employee at your wash “why didn’t you fill the grid” without them immediately understanding what you said and apologizing, you have a safety problem. So what is a grid? At most Full-Serves, there are two, one where a customer turns over the car for vacuuming and a second where an attendant parks the car for finishing. Grids are easy to understand and implement, the difficulty is ensuring they are adhered to every time, by every employee.
The Vacuum Grid
The vacuum grid illustration shows a typical two lane stack with 4 drops and 4 spots. Customers are guided into each spot, in sequence, to fill the grid, with the vacuum drop between cars. The most common mistake made happens on slow days. Both attendants and customers will want to fill spot 1 and jump to spot 3. You must train this habit out of your employees. You must also make sure customers know to remain in their car and wait for an attendant to guide them into the correct location before getting out. It may be necessary to use signs and cones to instruct customers to stop and wait. Some locations may also have to get a longer hose, about 20 feet, to be able to reach all areas of both cars in the lane from each drop. The result is that in a short time you will have better predictability, fewer vehicle movements, and improved safety. Skipping the one car length move to the vacuum by a hurried attendant reduces the risk of injury in an area with a lot up unexpected motion.
The Finishing Grid
One of the greatest opportunities to improve safety is to stack cars predictably in the Full Service finishing area. Depending on what your property allows, you should layout a grid to the maximum width and necessary depth to accommodate the highest anticipated volume. Every car should come off the conveyor into an assigned spot, not to be moved until the owner drives away the finished product. An organized grid system maintains all cars headed in the same direction. As long as there is a car in the grid, the drive off attendant must complete the grid. Some operators stencil the ground with numbers and positioning marks to avoid confusion. An additional safety measure is to install an anti-collision system. These products detect if a car has cleared the conveyor exit and shut down the conveyor and all equipment if a car does not exit for any reason.
The other objective is to reduce and control the movement of people at the conveyor exit. Employees should move to the vehicle, never the other way around. Customers should have a clear path to walk to their car that minimizes crossing traffic exiting the conveyor. All supplies that attendants need to finish the car should be within half a car length from where they are working. This keeps employees from moving around which is not only safer, but more efficient as well. For a grid to work effectively it must always be adhered to regardless of volume or employee count. Good habits breed predictability which is the foundation for improving safety.
Summary
No matter how busy or slow your site is, everyone should always know where the next vehicle is supposed to go. Creating a predictable controlled environment that minimizes employee movement and provides protective barriers for them to do their job will improve the safety of your wash. Safety shouldn’t be left to chance. Careful attention to training, management, signage, procedures, and equipment will help protect the most import asset at your wash; your employees and customers.
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