Scrubby's Car Wash — Local services in Gladstone

After a few rounds at Scrubby’s I found it all comes down to planning. Don’t sit there and feed the meter, it doesn’t need to be going the whole time, here’s what I recomend, when you first pull in skip past the wash and go to the vacuums, open up all the doors and trunk and hood and vacuum all the visible debris out from everywhere all the door jams and the areas around the trunk and hood, in the grill, get all the loose stuff out of there. Don’t expect to vacuum your carpet with those they aren’t super great for that but really good for getting the crud off the body of your car. Okay now go tot he washing lanes. start it up and get a rinse going. Rinse her nice and good. Okay now switch to the soap, soap her up nice and good. Okay there is where you wanna stop. Now you also want to make sure to bring your own sponge or microfiber washer doodab whatever you want to scrub it down with, also bring towels for drying afterward. Okay now she’s nice and soapy go ahead and scrub her down. Alright get it going again on another rinse. If you want to wax do it at home haha but to each their own, alright now go ahead and pull over to the vacuums again, fry your car off and your glass so they don’t get spots, open the doors and trunk and hood again and get all the moisture out from around those. Close them up, dry everything off. And then hit the highway for 20 minutes or so to get it nice and air dried. If you don’t bring your own scrubby you’ll have to use the shared one and it gets dirty easy. And then your car is dirty. All in all I like this car wash. Automated cashwashes are bad for your car so you definitely want to stick to a handwashing, and a place like this makes that nice and easy, generous with the soap, convenient tools, out of the sun (never wash your car in the sun). They could probably do with some new scrub brushes and a better vacuum system or maybe it needs to be serviced or the hoses are cracked idk but all in all...

So since the website doesn't say its $2.50 to start and you get 4 minutes which goes really quick so have a pocket full of quarters. Each extra quarter you add after its started adds another 30 seconds I think it was. There were no wash mitts in any of the bays, just a pressure washer and a "foaming brush". The website also claims "Our high-tech air shammee provides you with the spotless dry you expect from a professional car wash with the ease of a handheld device." however I did not see anything of the sort and was forced to drive away all wet and let it air dry. Once I got home and the car was dry it had horrible spots everywhere even though I used the "spotless rinse" and there were still stains from the bird poop that would have been gone if you had used a mitt. I did NOT use the foaming brush because they can and usually scratch the paint and who knows what it was used on last. So I used the Pre-soak, then the high pressure soap wash, then rinse, then spotless rinse.

In conclusion the place was clean and everything that was there did seem to work, but its a half ass way to get your car clean. I probably wont be back because I can get my car 5x cleaner at home with a mitt and my own soap. But if you are in a hurry and need your car to look good from 20 feet then I...

If you aren’t familiar with these types of car washes, I recommend pausing before paying to look over the instructions posted on the wall before you start your time. Also yes, there’s a $20 hold if you use your card, and that is clearly explained if you just pay attention. I love that this place is kind of tucked away off the street, I didn’t feel like I was being stared at or judged lol. It was clean, directions were clear. Yes, kind of expensive, but I would rather pay the $15 that I ended up paying here with a better clean that I am in control of, than the $10-$15 I’d pay in most automatic car wash that can’t even clean everything and give me anxiety while going through. I came here specifically only because I have a large crack in my windshield that I’m waiting to get fixed and was worried that going through a car wash would shatter it. Needless to say, I think I will return even after I have a new windshield.

Things were clean and working properly, instructions were clear and it wasn’t super busy on a Wednesday morning around 10 AM. I couldn’t see if there was an attendant around for help or not, but I also didn’t need to look. This was very easy for someone who’s never used a self serve car wash before. I did not use the vacuums, so I can’t...