91-Year-Old Carwash Attendant Remains on the Go

Despite his tenacity for work, Corbin says Smith has been leaving some hints lately that he might be ready to slow down, to retire.

“I always leave [retirement] open to him. I don’t pressure him either way, but this is probably the first time he has mentioned it,” Corbin says. “He’s really something else.”

Indeed, Smith admits that he may have to retire soon due to some physical limitations. While he hasn’t spent much time at the senior center lately because he has been helping out at a third location (which has put his weekly hours up to 50!), Smith suspects that when retirement does finally come around, he’ll spend most of his time there “playing cards and putting puzzles together.”

About Wash ’N Go

Wash ’N Go is in the process of building its 11th location in southern Illinois, about an hour southeast of St. Louis. The carwash chain is a subsidiary of Southern Food Park Inc., which has operated grocery and convenience stores since the 1970s. In the early 1990s the trend to place touchless automatics on-site at convenience stores was in full swing, says Jim Corbin, Wash ’N Go owner, but “we were landlocked at most locations and couldn’t do that.”

In some of the smaller town locations, Corbin says the company had hoped to put an automatic off-site to benefit from the added profit center and be able to promote the carwash within the convenience store.

“We did that in the beginning and did well with it,” Corbin recalls. “As we built carwashes, we found we were doing better in the carwash business than the convenience stores and shifted in that direction over the years.”

Southern Food Park has just one convenience store now.

All of the Wash ’N Go locations are strictly self-serve bays with touchless automatics. Some locations, mostly in the smaller towns, have three self-serve bays and one automatic. Other locations, mainly those in larger towns, have four self-serve bays and two automatics. All locations also feature a standalone dryer and four to six vacuums under a canopy.

Wash ’N Go employs 17 part-time people, who are mainly senior citizens, as well as two part-time office workers. Most locations are served by two employees.

“Most of my employees are retired, but nobody is as old as Francis [Smith, who is 91],” Corbin says with a laugh. “I usually find people who have been retired for a couple of years and have decided they want a little something to do. I have a lot of people who are in their late 60s or early 70s who work for me.”

It’s not uncommon, Corbin says, for other carwash operators in his area to employ mainly older workers, who Corbin says are often more customer oriented.

“I like to hire people who are able to get along with customers, who are outgoing, friendly and like to strike up a conversation,” he says. “That’s more important than someone who’s maintenance oriented.”