About the operator
I Ran the Tunnel
Before I Reviewed It
From 1997 to 2006 I worked at — and eventually managed — Royal Oaks Car Wash in Shoreview, Minnesota. Nine years of tunnel chemistry, brush maintenance, winter salt seasons, and learning exactly what separates a wash that babies your paint from one that just gets it wet.
Since then I've spent 20 years in industrial laundry automation and controls — a different kind of wash, same obsession with machines that clean things properly. But I never lost my soft spot for car washes.
I am running my own car through every wash in the Naperville area, plus the ones just over the line in Bolingbrook and Woodridge. Each gets the same six-part scorecard, paid for out of my own pocket. Until I have been through a wash, its page says Review pending — the prices, hours and format are verified, but there is no score, because a guessed score is worse than none.
How the scoring works
Every review follows the same method: I visit with my own car, buy a wash like anyone else, and score six things — Clean & Shine, Paint Safety, Dry & Finish, Vacuums & Amenities, Value & Membership Math, Operation & Upkeep — on a 1–5 scale. Six dimensions, scored 1–5 each, half-points allowed. Overall is the straight average — no weighting, no hand-tuning. Nobody pays for a review, and ad space never affects a score.
Until I have been through a wash, its page says Review pending. It still carries every fact I have verified — address, hours, format, the posted menu — but no score, no rank and no rating in its structured data. A placeholder number would be worse than none.
What gets measured
Each visit is logged on the same form: how long the line was, how long the car spent in the tunnel, what the wash material was and what condition it was in, how many vacuum stalls there are and how many work, what the menu board actually says, and a walk-around of the spots a tunnel usually misses. Numbers get cited; adjectives do not.