News

Dirty Girls Car Wash opens for business

By Scott Wagar

02/24/2015

Lynn Evenson and Leann Mellum have opened Bottineau’s newest business, Dirty Girls Car Wash, which is a touchless car wash that brings high tech to a new level in the auto wash industry. 

“It is a touchless car wash. There are not any brushes or rags. It’s all just high powered water and soaps,” Evenson said. “And, it is all automated. It’s crazy how advanced and computerized car washes have become. But basically, the customer drives up to the terminal, picks the level of wash desired and the bay will open and give instructions. The machine has sonar to know where your car is, how long it is, how high it is and it just starts washing,” she continued.

“We went with the new Laserwash 360. We wanted a nice, touchless car wash that could get the grim off vehicles without risking damage to the exterior,” Mellum said. “I’ve had bad experiences with cloth friction car washes that have actually scratched my car, so I wasn’t interested in that liability.  

“What is really neat is the FlashDry system,” Mellum added. “Basically, you will get your final spot-free rinse and the machine passes back over your car again with the dryers on. Once the machine stops, you simply drive out.”

The car wash has no attendants and is basically operated by smart technology that guides a customer through the entire process in an easy and understandable way. 

Evenson and Mellum, who are sisters, also stated that their car wash has a cyber-surveillance system which monitors the inside and outside of the building at all times.

As for the name of the car wash, it is taking some second looks in the community, but Dirty Girls Car Wash comes from the girls’ upbringing on a farm instead of some sly play on words. 

“We were going over names and it came up more as a joke. The more we thought about it the more we liked it,” Evenson said. “Growing up on the farm, we had to do every job imaginable and usually, we would come in from the field always covered head to toe in dirt or grease, so the name actually kind of fit. We ran the name past our mother and she immediately started laughing, so we knew it was a good one.”

“We kept coming back to the name ‘Dirty Girls’ and the image of our logo became so vivid in our minds,” Mellum said. “It was so clear to us what the image should look like that when we went to our design team they had a pretty easy time making it a reality.”

The car wash is open 12 months out of the year, and in a way, you could say that Evenson and Mellum decided to open a car wash because they were having trouble finding a car wash that was open at times. 

“Last spring my car desperately needed to be washed and we were in Minot so I was going to do it then. It was one of those days when the temperature is thawing everything and there is water splashing all over your car, so I decided to stop at the car wash on the north end of town,” Evenson said. 

“When my husband and I got there the car wash was shut down and I wasn’t very happy. I told my husband that was it, we were opening a car wash in Bottineau because I could not go another two or three weeks before getting my car washed. He thought I was joking, so I called Leann, who usually always backs up my crazy ideas and she was hooked,” she continued. 

“I was actually caught off guard. We had talked about it in passing a few times; usually when we were complaining about having dirty cars but never once did I think Lynn was serious,” Mellum stated. 

“Suddenly, Lynn called me up out of the blue and said ‘Hey, let’s seriously start a car wash.’ I was dumbfounded because usually I am the one in the family who comes up with crazy ideas to spend money and usually have to convince Lynn that it is a good idea. So now we were in role reversal,” she added. 

“She started going into ‘pitch’ mode to try to convince me and that’s when I knew I would do it. So, we sat down and started punching numbers and doing research. That’s when we realized we could really do this. Everything went into warp speed after that.”

Hours for Dirty Girls Car Wash actually depend upon the temperature outside.

“When it’s cold we will open when it gets to 10 degrees above zero and will close down when it drops below 5 degrees,” Evenson said.  “When it gets nicer out, we will be open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. It could go all night, but we want to be considerate of the apartments that are right behind us.”

“What is nice about having smart technology is that if you are in line and 10 o’clock hits and there are four cars in line, the wash will still allow all the cars to go through,” Mellum said. “It is when the terminal sits inactive for 10 minutes that the wash will officially shut down.” 

Evenson and Mellum said that there is still some work that needs be done at their business, which includes some cleanup, construction, signage and landscaping.

There are also future plans for Dirty Girls Car Wash which included extra features and adding a vacuum station so their customers can clean the interior of their vehicles, too.