Icy roads and winter travel conditions can give drivers headaches, and create more work for road crews — but it’s an annual dream come true for carwash owners. Each layer of salt and sand the road crews put down often ends up on cars. Those cars often end up at automatic carwashes.

Tim Newell, manager [of] Jet Stream Car Wash on Witzel Avenue, said no summer day in the business can compare to a winter month with a lot of snow.

“People are concerned about getting salt off their vehicles,” he said. “If the weather and road conditions are good (after a snowstorm), we could easily double or triple a nice weather day in the summer.”

Full-service car washes like Jet Stream have seen a 3 percent increase in business from 2002 to 2005, according to the International Carwash Association. Meanwhile, the number of survey respondents who said they’ve pulled the rags, soap and Turtle Wax out of the garage and washed their vehicles at home declined 20 percent from 1996 to 2005. [more...]