OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — If your vehicle is looking a little messy, IQ Car Wash near 180th and Maple is open.
Owner Travis Barker opened the wash in March, which he says wasn't ideal timing since that's when most people began working from home due to the pandemic.
"If you just even sat and watched the street traffic, you could tell the street traffic during the day. You could cross Maple without a streetlight no problem, anytime of the day," Barker said.
Barker says with the low traffic count, business isn't meeting the expectations you would expect at a center location like his.
"Really it's been myself doing all the physical work around here," Barker said. "And then as far as everything else goes, my wife and my mom all just kind of come together to do all the work. We haven't had the traffic flow enough to hire a person yet, and we're really looking to do [that] because our facility is meant to be manned 12 hours a day."
With it's self-serve service, customers can limit interaction with staff when cleaning their vehicles.
Or if they prefer, they also have a drive-thru.
"We have a touch-free and soft touch automatics," Barker said. "And those are both unique in that they do a 3D scan of the car. So the best example of what that 3D scan allows you to do is if you have a truck, the machine will actually come down and wash the back window of a pickup truck, and then move along, and wash the tailgate, and it washes those as separate pieces because it knows where they are."
Barker says that provides a better custom wash.
"It actually has a program and it scrubs," Barker said. "So it takes that pressure and rinses like this. It's 18 inches away from the car. So like bugs and everything on the front end really gets scrubbed off of the vehicle very well."
With more people going out, Barker hopes business will pick up.
"Between weather and people actually getting out and about, I think some people are back in the office," Barker said. "I think people also became restless, and that's something else we found out through COVID too, was that I had families who with mothers and children, because they were looking for something to do with moms being home with the kids, and through out automated washers they kind of have a light show that goes with them so it was a form of entertainment sometimes. It was something to go do, that was still available to people."
IQ Car Wash
LOCATION:
17477 Manderson St. Omaha, NE 68116
HOURS:
24 hours
CONTACT:
402-720-1069
