Crew Car Wash History

Crew car wash was founded in Fort Wayne Indiana by brothers Joe and Ed Dahm in 1948. They started under the name Mike’s Minit Man, named after the Joe and Ed’s younger brother. The company started out with $35,000 in seed money from their father making it the first full-service car was in Indiana and the 18th in the nation. Vehicles were chained to a conveyor and hand scrubbed back then. Second location was but in 1971 in Fort Wayne under the mantras of “the customer is the boss” and “treat your team member like family”. (Ottinger 2016).
In 1978 Mike’s Minit Man changed their name to Mike’s Express Carwash after they switched from doing full service carwashes to exterior car washes only. With Mike’s ran with two stores until 1985 when they

Billy Shaming is named President of Mike’s Carwash. Billy Shaming revolutionized how the company is ran. Mr. Shamming starts to standardize everything that is done at the company so things are the same at each location, allowing for better training and customer experiences across the board. Mike’s changes the design concept of the buildings that current new locations and modeled after. In 2012 after 64 years of being in business Mike’s washes its 100,000,000 vehicle. Mike’s expands into Kentucky for the first time with a new location in Florence. In 2014 Ohio recognizes mikes as one of the best

Bill has Central Indiana under Crew, Mike has mikes in North/south Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, opens headquarters in Cincinnati. Bill names his portion Crew, named with respect to the employees that do the day to day job. Crew has 26 locations in Indianapolis area, Kokomo, Lafayette and West Lafayette, Terra Haute and Columbus. In 2015 Crew opened up its first store since the reorganization in Brownsburg Indiana. Crew receives the top place to work by the best places to work in Indiana. In 2017 Crew opens up 3 more Indiana locations in Merrillville, Bloomington, and Avon West making it to its current size of 30 locations (Company Highlights).
Crew’s mission statement, or how they refer to it as their Crew Purpose is “To create smiles and lifetime customers”. Their vision statement is “to be the service industry leader”. Crew and their culture is all about creating smiles and giving the customer and the employees the best experience they can have. They do this by taking care of the employees and strive to help them reach their full potential. As for the customer founder Ed Dahm sums it up very well, “We are actually in the people business, we just happen to wash cars” (Our