Time To Come Clean There Are No Safe Secrets Between Motorists And Their Car Wash Jockeys

They know what restaurants you like to eat at, they know what cigarette brand you smoke, they even know how neat your home is.

They’re not private investigators or secret government spies.

They’re car wash jockeys.

Spring has sprung and with it so has the car wash business. For the people who wash, wax and dry cars, now is not only the beginning of the busy season - it’s also time to tackle some of the filthiest cars of the year.

“There’s ice, dirt, slush, sand and salt,” said Rex Taylor, a car washer at Royal Car Wash on Third Street.

“They’re just caked underneath with mud,” Jack Baldwin, of Autobahn Car Wash on Government Way, said standing next to mounds of mud culled from the bottoms of hundreds of vehicles.

While these employees are scrubbing windows and swabbing floor mats - all for minimum wage - they’re also getting a unique glimpse into the lives of their customers.

“You can tell how often they eat out, you can tell if they have kids,” Taylor said. “You can tell if they’re a McDonald’s person or a Burger King person.”

Washer Chad Vandever believes that a dirty car inside is a sign of what things are like at home.

“Younger people have McDonald’s wrappers up to the ceiling,” Taylor explains, as cars once caked with mud, come out of the car wash sparkling new. “Now that BMW there - they’re always clean.”

Taylor has even learned to tell the difference between coffee drinkers and pop drinkers - judging from the spill marks on the carpet.

Being a car wash jockey isn’t work for the faint of heart.

They have to paw through mounds of fast food wrappers, dig out wads of chewing gum ground into carpeting and scrub months worth of dried-on muck.

What they find inside ranges from the disgusting to the bizarre.

They’ve found guns, drugs and dirty diapers in the cars they clean.

Ken VanGurp, a washer at Autobahn, actually discovered wheat growing underneath one car seat.

Taylor is a veteran in the business - going on his third year as a car washer.

“I’m the master of the tunnel,” he said with a grin.

“The tunnel” - as it’s called - is the place where cars are put onto metal tracks and then sprayed down by large machines.

Working in the tunnel is considered one of the premier places to work at a car wash. The spraying water is cool in the summer but most importantly, tunnel workers say they like the job because they don’t have to deal with the public.

“If anybody misses a spot - we hear about it,” Taylor said, pointing out that car washers should not be mistaken for miracle workers. “If you’ve got 50 pounds of dog hair in your car, we can’t get all of that out.”

VanGurp braces himself for a tough job when a certain logger with a white pickup comes through.

“He’s fussy about his truck,” VanGurp said. “He’s not afraid to bring it back through,” sometimes three or four times.

Like a rite of passage, spring is one of the car wash boom times. Autobahn recently washed almost 300 cars in one day.

“I think people are just sick of having dirty cars,” said Kathy Counsil, manager of Royal car wash.

Debra Allison, of Coeur d’Alene, agrees. “It was like the spirit had spoken - it’s spring cleaning time.”

However, Allison wouldn’t dream of having someone wash her car for her.

“Show how grungy my car is to other people? Oh my God no. I’ll take care of my own grunge,” she said after spraying down her car with a high-powered hose.

Instead, she opted to use the self-service car wash.

It’s been six months since she’s cleaned her car - as evidenced by the nearly 4 inches of mud caked below the doors.

Like many cars, her blue Pontiac has suffered with this spring’s strange weather. Freezing, thawing, snow and rain has left her driveway - and many North Idaho roads - a boggy mess.

Although it usually only costs her a dollar to wash her car, “This was an eight quarter job.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo