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On this episode of Better Car Washing Everywhere, recorded live at the Car Wash Show 2026 from the Arcadian Services booth, host Matt DeWolf sat down with Mike Ohlinger, co-owner of OhmCo Car Wash Marketing, to talk through where AI adoption in the industry really stands.
Ohlinger and his wife, Mel, have run OhmCo for about seven years and have watched the marketing landscape shift dramatically as AI tools have rolled out. His take on the current moment: adoption is real, but expectations are running ahead of the technology.
Ohlinger described the industry's current relationship with AI as being at an early stage. "I like to say we're kind of on the iPhone 3 level of adoption right now," he said, adding that the technology is "a little over-promised and under-delivered right now."
Where he does see AI paying off is with time-consuming administrative tasks. Marketing work in particular has become far more accessible, he said, since so many consumer-grade tools are now free or available for as little as $20 a month.
One of the more practical use cases Ohlinger pointed to is standard operating procedures. Operators with just one, two or three locations often struggle to get their processes written down in the first place. AI is making that easier, and making it easier to keep those documents current once they exist.
"It makes keeping them up to date really easy," Ohlinger said. He described recording a process out loud, transcribing it and feeding that transcript into an AI tool to generate a usable SOP. When something changes, an operator can update the source document once and have it propagate everywhere instead of manually tracking down every affected file.
"If you don't have that process in place, your documentation's useless after a year," he said. "Here you can just update as you go very easily."
As a design-first agency, OhmCo takes a cautious approach to generative AI for images and video. Ohlinger's biggest concern isn't the technology itself, but how operators use it. Too often, he said, businesses treat the first AI output as a finished product rather than a starting point.
That matters because consumers notice. Ohlinger cited a statistic that 73% of people distrust advertisements that openly use AI generated content, meaning any visible error, like distorted hands or an inaccurate logo, immediately costs credibility. "You have to make sure that you're making multiple passes of your imagery and your copy," he said, "to make sure that you're getting away from some of those common AI pitfalls."
Video is where Ohlinger draws his firmest line. He pointed to Coca-Cola's widely criticized AI-generated holiday ad as a cautionary example, even for a company with virtually unlimited resources. His advice to operators: stay far away from AI video for now.
According to Ohlinger, the biggest focus for OhmCo over the past year and a half has been optimizing car wash websites for answer engine optimization, or AEO, alongside traditional SEO. He sees it as a return to more authentic, well-structured content rather than keyword stuffing.
FAQ sections are performing especially well, he said, because they mirror the question-and-answer format AI search tools favor. Anticipating specific customer questions, such as whether a wash is touchless or offers free vacuums, gives operators an edge. Blogs are also making a comeback. "I love blogs. I love writing them and reading them," Ohlinger said, noting that authentic stories, like a family-owned wash's history, are rewarded again when the content is well structured.
He was careful to note that the rules are shifting quickly. "This could change tomorrow," he said. Still, he believes the opportunity is real and largely untapped in the car wash space specifically. Smaller, single-site operators who apply these standards intentionally can compete with much larger, established brands.
Data privacy came up as a natural next question. Some car wash technology developers have already built proprietary AI models for specific functions, like AI-driven phone answering and ticket logging, in part to keep sensitive customer data out of third-party systems.
Ohlinger said that path is not yet realistic for most operators. "This still isn't consumer-grade tech yet," he said, pointing out that even tools built for general business use, like Claude's Cowork feature, require a level of technical comfort most operators haven't developed. He expects wider adoption, and higher pricing, once that gap closes.
Asked what operators should be thinking about as they weigh AI tools, Ohlinger's answer centered on intention over novelty. "We're still kind of in a grifter period right now," he said, cautioning that the ease of building and selling AI-powered apps has created an environment ripe for overhyped, unsupported products. He urged operators to research any tool thoroughly and think carefully about what data they're willing to share.
His advice for one thing operators can do today: focus on the basics of their online presence. Build out an FAQ section, anticipate customer questions and start telling the story of the business. "Let's get back to those basics," he said. "You're gonna be rewarded for it."
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