Making $500 Per Day Washing Cars | Undercover Millionaire

This is Tyler. Two years ago, he sent me a handwritten letter about how he started a mobile car washing business in high school, made enough money to pursue it full-time after graduating, and since he found my videos helpful, he offered to wash my car for free. And since I never say no to free, I decided to give him a chance.

However, when he arrived, I was blown away by his attention to detail, professionalism, and overall business—to the point where I just had to find out how much money can you make from this, and is this something that anyone could learn to do with as little as a few hundred dollars? Well, today I went undercover to find the truth behind one of the best do-it-yourself businesses that I have ever seen and break down how you could make as much as $500 a day washing cars.

As soon as you hit the like button and subscribe, because that tells me whether or not these are the types of videos you'd like to see more of, and if so, I could continue being wildly uncomfortable filming outside in 100-degree heat for 13 hours straight. So thank you guys so much and now let’s begin.

So it's 6:30 in the morning right now. I am exhausted. Did not get a good night of sleep, but we're here at Tyler's place. He's got the van outside the garage. Here he is, let’s go!

I woke up at 3:30 this morning.

“Why?”

I gotta hit the gym before we go to work.

“What time do you go to bed?”

About 8:30. We gotta fold a couple towels, and then I have some chemicals to fill up, and then we'll go get water. So these are all the towels we use to wash the vehicle, so I'm gonna go get a bucket in the middle in the van, but basically we're just folding these in half and half again; we're gonna pile them up so we got a bunch to use.

I did not think I’d be doing this at 6:30 in the morning—folding towels. All right, it is what it is. This is easy though.

“So how'd you get started doing this?”

Um, I always helped my father wash his own car in our driveway. We never took our cars to the drive-through car wash because it damages your paint. So when I was about 15, I was looking for a job, and I already had the skill of washing cars, so it was pretty easy for me to offer my services to my neighbors. When I first started, I sold my services to the members of my church. I grew up Mormon and so we're all very tight-knit and very religious, and we all live—the people that go to your church all live around you in the same neighborhood—so it was very easy for me to sell my service to them because they wanted to help me out.

“So how do you think I’m going to do with something like this?”

Um, it depends. Do you get out of the house a lot?

“No.”

Why do you have so many chemicals to clean one car?

“Well, every process requires a different chemical. APC is our all-purpose cleaner; that's what we'll wipe down the interior with. This is a detailer, so I'll wipe down the exterior paint. We have window cleaner, we have wheel and tire cleaner. This is another degreaser, so if you have really dirty wheels and tires, I'll use this; and then we have tire dressing. This is probably somewhere between five to seven hundred dollars' worth of chemicals.”

“Wow. So this is where I buy my water?”

Yeah, I hold about 100 gallons in my van and it takes about five bucks to fill up.

“So why are you paying for water? It's free.”

Well, see, your hose water has a lot of minerals in it; this water is spot free. So when it dries on the car, there's no water spots.

“It’s kind of a tight fit but, all right, shove that in here. Then I’m gonna go put some tokens in the machine.”

Yeah, I just kind of watch it, then you press the stop button; you don’t want it to overflow.

“Yeah, now you can see the water levels are a little bit higher right here. I try to get it to about—for the top tank—like right about an inch.”

“Okay, so how big is the tank and how much does it cost to fill up the entire thing?”

Um, the tank is 100 gallons and it costs about three dollars to fill up, and how long will that last?

“Probably about 10 to 12 cars.”

“Whoa, that's not a lot.”

Really, when you count the cost of the car, the water is not a big expense. Your biggest expense is gas. We invested about fifteen hundred dollars, which included a water tank, generator, pressure washer, of course, all of the miscellaneous brushes, towels, and chemicals.

“So how do you get the fifteen hundred dollars?”

Uh, my father lent me the money and the conditions were I only got to keep ten dollars per car until his investment was paid back.

“Did you go to college?”

I did not.

“And what did your parents think about that?”

Um, at first they were not too keen on the idea. After I expressed my love for business, they became fond of the idea.

“We got all of our supplies and water, let's go wash some cars.”

Okay, so right now we're at our first client's house. We're here every Tuesday or every other Tuesday, but you might recognize this client.

“What's up dude, didn't know you guys would be filming!”

Yeah, I hired him for the day. I need some car footage. I got a new employee, and I want you to meet them. I don't know if you guys have met before, but he's gonna be washing with me from now on.

“What's up bro?”

“Hey Ryan.”

Yeah, so we're washing your cars today, man.

“I know.”

Wow, like, so which one you gonna wash?

“I want this one. I want the Porsche.”

Okay, so we'll back that up; I'll wash it.

“Why are you making me look bad, man? Really?”

There you go, no shirt on! I came from the gym, so you want my shirt?

“Oh my gosh, this is so nice.”

Oh, it’s kind of close—all right, uh, I'm driving this. There we go, look at that!

“Get it?”

It should not have taken Graham that long to back out that car. I think that was a 12 or 16 point turn.

I’m gonna first spray the tire and then I'll get the face of the wheel, then I'm also going to spray the barrels in the caliper.

“Don't breathe it in, Graham! Don't breathe it in.”

[Music]

There's some cleaner in those lug nuts—get closer.

[Music]

So we're going to take this end off, put this on.

[Music]

Graham's doing pretty well; he did miss a couple spots— I had to go back and correct him, but with a little bit more practice, he'll do just fine. He was also pretty excited to use the foam cannon.

I have never had anyone that excited before; this is probably one of the most satisfying, fun things that I've done. I watch videos of people doing this online. It's exactly what you think it is; it is amazing.

[Music]

All right, so now we're gonna wash. I got two mitts in here; we want to be washing the way the airflow goes around the car—don’t do any swirls and I'm not going to go side to side; I'm going to go front to back and it's folded into a square because I'm going to wash a section with this square and then I'm going to flip to a new side.

And when you're washing down here, don't get this area yet; you save that for the last because this is where all the road grime is.

So we just rinsed the vehicle, and there's a bunch of water on the car, and what we're going to do is we're going to use this leaf blower to get the majority of it off before we put a towel to the paint.

Definitely a little nerve-wracking working on expensive cars—like just in case something gets caught underneath this or something like that that I don't see and scraping it around the car.

“Why do you wipe back and forth like this?”

Because I feel like if it's going to scratch, it's going to scratch regardless; if you do scratch the car, the scratches will only be able to be seen at certain angles. If you do like figure eights or circles, then however you view the paint, the light will reflect, and it will show the swirls.

Most recent car I damaged was a BMW M4 competition. I swung my pressure washer around and the very end of its metal, and I put a big gouge in the hood.

I told the customer I'd pay for their hood to get repainted, but he was like, "No, don't worry about it; it's small, I don't care."

See, I always think about it as in—I don't know, it would be maybe at most a thousand dollars to replace the windshield, and I think my reputation is worth more than a thousand dollars.

Yeah, see these water spots? We got to do the best quality work.

“Yeah, you know I just hadn't worked over here yet though, that's why I was gonna do it.”

“How much of a difference does it really make to use the brush?”

Um, I think it adds the little extra touch that the clients notice—getting all of the debris out of the window buttons, getting the dust out of the crevices and creases in the door panels, sure.

And plus, it makes our job easier when we go to wipe the interior.

“Try not to touch the vacuum to that piano black plastic; it'll scratch it.”

“This sucks really good!”

“Yo, Alex, this sucks more than your mom!”

Next off, we're gonna wipe the interior down. I have our rag, and I have some all-purpose cleaner, and we're just going to use this on basically everything.

We're gonna use it on the doors, all this plastic trim right here, the seats, the dash. One thing I don't want you to get though is anything that's glossy, so all of this black—don't get it; it'll streak very badly, and then we'll just have to wipe it again.

The tricky thing about these frameless windows is every time you open the door, the windows drop down an inch. So when I open the doors to clean the windows, I'm unable to get this bottom inch, and so how you fix that is you get a little pick tool and you close this lock, and the window raises up.

We apply a tire dressing using a brush.

Sure, what we're going to do is we're going to spray a little bit on the brush, and then we want to carefully get it on the tire without getting it on the wheel, and we do also need to get it on this lip too.

So what is this? Is it like an oil?

Normally, I don't use the oil ones because they sling everywhere—they’re very shiny and they're very gooey, and so when you go down the road and your tires spin super fast, it sprays it along the side.

The water-based stuff works better and it gives a nice matte finish.

The amount of detail that Tyler puts in these cars is incredible—like even doing the water-based vs. the oil base; like that's something I would never even think of.

Just like when the client's done, and actually drives the car, the difference, it's incredible!

So I see we're done with the first car. How much money did we make from this?

This car was 75; it took about an hour, right?

“Yeah, probably maybe a little over an hour. I slowed you down—I'm learning, you know what? We’re gonna pick it up—we're gonna make it up at the end of the day because then we'll get good at it.”

So this is card number two, and what's nice about having repeat clients is they give you a consistent amount of cars.

I'm back here about every other week; I'm not tall enough for these jobs, so you'll want to—wanna—

[Music]

So I'm almost done at this point. I gotta do the wheels, the tires, and then I believe some of the interior leather.

So Tyler showed me how to do this—to spray the wheel down a little bit and then go for it—

“And why do they gotta make these wheels so complicated? Why can’t it just be like one flat disc?”

So we just finished up the second car—we made about $170 or so. It's about 10:15 in the morning.

“What's the net profit on something like that?”

There's about twenty dollars' worth of expenses per vehicle. The van itself cost me $27,000. The setup, not including this stuff, but just like the water tank and all this metal work, cost me $6,000.

And then all of this equipment that I actually use—another $2,500.

All right, so on the doors here we have all of our detailed brushes; these all have their own individual purpose. So in these holders, we have all of our chemicals we use on a daily basis.

Here, we have a couple waxes, we have a window cleaner, a couple more waxes, specifically for a matte vehicle.

I love how clean it is; honestly, like the fact that you had this all being able to be rolled up like this.

Down here, we have our pressure washer; this one’s electric. I like it because it’s very quiet.

Then we have an air compressor. We have our reel—this is what I hook up to their customers' power. If we don't have power, we want our generator, and then that's our pressure washer hose.

Then up here, we have all of our towels that we use. So back here we have our 100-gallon water tank.

I loved it; this is so efficient, it looks so sleek. This is real carbon fiber!

“No, oh, it's just a wrap.”

It's still cool though! My gosh, yeah I feel tired.

It’s only 12.

“And I feel like I've worked a full day.”

Do you ever eat out when you're going between these things or do you always pack a lunch?

“I never eat out when I’m washing cars, no. I actually prefer home-cooked meals; my girlfriend cooks pretty well. Currently, my girlfriend helps me with a lot of the administrative work, so we're kind of a team already. I definitely couldn’t do a lot of the things that I do without her, but I definitely want to get another detailer and someone doing the hands-on thing.”

Have you ever thought about just quitting and doing a nine to five?

“I have really, yeah. There were definitely some times where, like, I hate this. I don't want to do it anymore. I quit. There are few jobs that will pay me the amount of money I want to make, but that requires basically giving them 10 to 15 years of your life before they ever pay you a substantial amount of money. One day, I do hope to have a family, and I think that business will allow me to give them the life that they deserve.”

[Foreign Applause]

So we got our third vehicle almost done; we're really banging through this one. We got the exterior pretty much completed; I'm gonna vacuum the car that way we go on to the next one; we start making more money today.

[Applause]

For the amount of work that we're putting in this and the quality and the detail and the professionalism, I don’t get why he's not charging more.

I'm gonna be completely honest— that's something like privately I've been telling Tyler—you have to charge more! I think the detailing industry is very commoditized; there’s a dime a dozen detailers and so it is hard to get the higher pricing just because the clients know that they can go down the street and get someone that will do it for cheaper.

The thing is you're very good at what you do—to a fault. You're so detail-oriented, you're spending more time on the car than you are on the sales aspect and the business aspect of like honing in your prices, finding the right price point, marketing yourself.

You're too good at doing this; you need someone to go in there and revamp the business model, get you going, and then you're the one that shows up to do like the oversight and make sure that everything's running smoothly.

“I love what I do, and I just want to deliver the best results.

It's bull crap, man! You want to make money—you want to make money—you gotta—we gotta make you make money!

“Yeah, I probably will be raising my prices, because Graham's definitely been bugging me to do so, and Graham's very frugal, so trust his advice.”

So we're at the next job. What's going on with this?

“So this thing is too fancy, and it has a carbon monoxide detector and it automatically shuts off when it detects too much, and right now it's saying there is too much carbon monoxide in our area, so it will not run."

“Have you tried turning it off and on again though?”

I feel like if you just unplug it and plug it back in like that could reset something.

“Are we serious?”

I'm being serious—watch, it’s on; it's going to go off in a minute. Dude, that's not making money today!

I show up; problems disappear!

Have you ever forgotten about a client—like had someone lined up and it's just like, "Oh crap, I totally spaced?"

“Yes, I have. Oh, I had been washing this one client off and on maybe six times, and I never saw the client; he always just left his Tesla unlocked in the driveway, and he'd Venmo me afterwards. I did that one time to him and I texted him that I totally spaced our appointment; I forgot. He never texted me back; nothing—I haven't heard from him ever since.”

No, and I texted him multiple times. I apologized—I understand I probably inconvenienced you greatly. I'd love to give you half off your next wash or throw in a free wax.

“Didn't—hasn't messaged me since; I’ve never spoken to him.”

Oh hi, Graham!

So I got a surprise for you.

“No way!”

I would rather probably you wash this car and me observe.

“What would you say the coolest car you've washed is?”

Oh, the coolest car I've washed is a Bugatti Chiron.

“Are you serious?”

Yeah, and when I did the Bugatti Chiron, I also washed a Ferrari LaFerrari and a McLaren P1.

“Who owned those cars?”

Um, a very rich guy who doesn’t want you to know his name.

So if somebody's just looking to wash their car at home, what do you recommend—like what are some of the common mistakes that people do when washing their own car?

“Don’t wash it in your driveway and don’t use your hose water. The hose water is very hard—it leaves a lot of spots. Go to a DIY—do-it-yourself car wash bay; it’ll cost you a little bit more. You have to put in a couple quarters, but at least you’ll get spot-free water, and you’ll be in the shade.”

[Foreign Music]

If you wanted to get into mobile detailing, you could do it with no more than a hundred dollars. You'd buy a couple towels, buy some chemicals, and maybe a hose, and you'll be set.

If you do want to spend a bit more—about $250—you could get some more brushes, a bigger assortment of chemicals, but you could definitely get started for not a lot of money.

So we just finished up the day; we washed five cars, made almost $500.

I'm exhausted!

“Hey, I just got home!”

“Oh, are you gonna wash my car now? It's pretty dirty.”