Professional Janitorial Services for Car Dealerships: Cut Costs and Impress Customers

Written by: Karen Lawes Maguire

Karen is the founder and CEO of CleanerMatch.com, a leading cleaning industry website. With 10+ years experience, she's an expert on new cleaning technologies, regulations, and best practices.

Updated: Jan 26th, 2024

Car dealerships are busy places that require diligent cleaning to make a good impression on customers. With constant foot traffic in sales and service areas, dealerships can quickly appear dirty and disorganized if regular professional cleaning is not done.

Unique Cleaning Challenges at Car Dealerships

While all facilities require regular cleaning, car dealerships pose particular janitorial challenges including:

• Showroom Floors - The showroom floor collects dirt, tire marks, oil drips, and other grime from test drives and customer foot traffic. Keeping floors pristine requires diligent mopping, scrubbing, and buffing.
• Vehicle Surfaces - Customer hands touching vehicles lead to fingerprints and smudges on glass, mirrors, and paintwork. Properly cleaning vehicles without causing swirls or damage takes specialized techniques and products.
• Service Areas - Repair bays, lifts, tools and garages easily collect significant grease, oil, tire marks, and other hard-to-remove grime. Thorough cleaning is critical for safety and cleanliness.
• High Traffic - Between customers and employees, dealership foot traffic is very high. This constant flow increases frequency for tasks like sweeping, sanitizing surfaces, and trash removal.
• Specialized Areas - Dealer facilities contain many specialized zones like showrooms, offices, restrooms, waiting areas, employee break areas, and more. Each area requires customized cleaning approaches.
• Large Spaces - Dealerships are expansive, with large showrooms, service areas, inventories, and outdoor lots. Thoroughly cleaning expansive square footage demands significant time and labor.

Navigating these challenges requires professional cleaners with expertise specific to automotive facilities.

Average Auto Dealership Cleaning Service Costs

Here are some real life pricing examples from auto dealerships that hired professional cleaning services:

"We have a medium sized dealership in Ohio. We were quoted $1,800 per month for daily cleaning of our showroom, offices, breakrooms and periodic cleaning of the service area."

"Our Toyota dealership is about 80,000 square feet. We pay $3,500 monthly for daily cleaning of floors, windows, bathrooms, and trash removal. Deep cleaning the service bays and full detailing is extra."

"We own a luxury car dealership in LA. For nightly cleaning of the showroom, offices, and outside areas we pay $2,600. The pricing is based on the high level interior detail cleaning they provide."

"We operate a high volume Ford dealership. For complete daily janitorial service including pressure washing the lots, we pay a national cleaning company $5,200 per month."

"My small used car lot was quoted $480 per month for basic cleaning three days a week. This includes sweeping, mopping, sanitizing the office and restroom, and trash removal."

"We have a large dealership with a body shop. We pay $6,800 a month to have the whole facility cleaned daily. This includes the showroom, shop, offices, outside areas, window cleaning, etc."

The prices can vary greatly based on dealership size, level of service, and frequency. But expect to invest $500 or more per month for basic daily cleaning.

Keeping Your Dealership Spotless: Pro Tips for Cleaning

Making a great first impression on customers is critical for car dealerships. "Having a clean location makes a good impression and could improve your business," says Steve Accurso, owner of Clean Streak Commercial Cleaning. To keep your dealership looking its best, professional cleaning goes far beyond just tidying up.

"We've got shops in the back with lots of different fluids that have to be cleaned. We have bathrooms that need to be sanitized. We've got glass that needs to be cleaned. So there's a lot more to it than just showing up and wiping down some surfaces," Accurso states.

Tailored, thorough cleaning is key. "Customers typically ask us to clean not only their floors and the glass and the shops and the service areas but that also includes pressure washing, sanitizing and some deeper cleaning of certain areas as well," says Accurso.

Focus on high traffic areas like the showroom floor daily or even multiple times a day. As Accurso notes, "You focus on areas that have differing levels of foot traffic through the facility whatever they are and address those that are higher traffic areas on a daily basis or perhaps on a more than daily basis multiple times a day."

Use appropriate cleaning solutions for each area. "Another example is making sure you always use the appropriate cleaning solution so we have different color bottles with different types and strengths of solution," Accurso advises.

Don't forget key areas like service shops, bathrooms, and all glass surfaces.

By following these professional recommendations, your dealership can maintain a spotless, welcoming environment for customers.

Recommended Cleaning Schedule for Car Dealerships

To maintain showroom shine and sanitation, car dealerships need regular cleaning on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

This cleaning regimen removes daily dirt buildup, maintains showroom sparkle, and keeps the facility looking professional.

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