Cherry Blossom Express Car Wash is an express exterior car wash located in Macon, GA. Owner Grady Griffin and his sons Fain and Robert are relative newcomers to the automotive care industry but have quickly found success in their investment. Cherry Blossom Express has become an icon of the region for both quality service and their unique facility made to resemble a train station, capitalizing on its location underneath a well-known railroad bridge

Challenge

While the Griffins had a long history of successful ventures, they quickly discovered the car wash business presented unique challenges. Specifically, the risk of mid-tunnel collisions proved to be a stressful worry. They quickly found damage costs were only part of the equation.

“You may or may not be losing a lot of money out of it, but the headache that it causes is unreal because you’re trying to figure out, ‘well, who’s responsible; whose insurance company is gonna pick this up? Is an insurance company going to pick this up?’ It’s just a mess,” Fain said.

To see success long-term, Cherry Blossom Express would need a definitive solution to clear these hurdles.

Solution

Seeing the risk mid-tunnel collisions posed to their revenue and reputation, Cherry Blossom Express sought a method of preventing accidents without negatively impacting the customer experience. In addition, Cherry Blossom Express recognized a growing need to stand out in a saturated market. Therefore, any solution they chose needed to not only reliably prevent vehicle collisions throughout the entire tunnel but also offer additional value that differentiated them from local competitors.

Cherry Blossom Express found their answer in NoPileups™ full-tunnel collision system.

Results

The impact of NoPileups at Cherry Blossom Express was seen almost instantly. NoPileups was successfully averting incidents traditional anti-collision systems couldn’t, such as the time a customer shifted to reverse inside the tunnel.

“NoPileups shut it down,” Fain said. “She ended up a half an inch from hitting the car behind her, and if NoPileups hadn’t stopped the tunnel, that car would have still been going forward. There would have been a clear-cut collision, but thanks to the tunnel getting shut off, that gave us the half an inch that we needed to avoid anything.”

Just as important to Cherry Blossom Express was the cost savings. In just four months of using NoPileups, Fain estimates the service saved Cherry Blossom Express $6,000 in damages and insurance deductibles alone.

“…[E]ven if it saves you one pileup a year, one pileup every five years, it’s worth it. It’ll make things safer and make operators, in the long run, more money,” Fain said.

He was also impressed with the NoPileups dedicated service team. He especially appreciated their availability on the weekends and their proactive approach.

“They’ll even call me if they notice there’s something offline or doesn’t look right; they’ll call me to try and get it figured out,” Fain said.

NoPileups’ influence on Cherry Blossom Express extended beyond simple collision prevention. According to Griffin, the reliability and always-on protection gave his employees confidence and peace-of-mind. The service also serves as a selling point for the car wash.

“Sometimes people are intimidated by going through, and you can tell them that we’ve got this in place, that anywhere in that tunnel where something could go wrong, we’re gonna shut it down,” Fain said. “We’re gonna shut it down. We’re gonna be able to get you through safely every single time.”

No Looking Back

For everyone at Cherry Blossom Express, it’s difficult to imagine operating a car wash without NoPileups.

“I sit here in the office,” Fain said. “I’ve got the cameras up. I stare at them all the time, and I’ve had a couple times where I see a car starting to jump and NoPileups shuts it down. Knowing that I may not have been able to react fast enough if something happens is great. It saves you a lot of money, but at the very least, it saves a whole lot of headache having to deal with all that.”

As Cherry Blossom Express looks to expand, Griffin says NoPileups already has a place in the tunnel.

“I will definitely be installing NoPileups at the next location.”