This car wash company is scaling happiness—and building a culture that is fueling growth

By Verne Harnish 

In an industry where talent is hard to find and turnover averages 75%, applicants are flocking to Crew Car Wash—and staying if they are lucky enough to win a job. The company was ranked number two in Glassdoor’s Best Places to work for 2025, second to Bain & Co. Glassdoor highlighted its “Flexible schedules, great benefits, free washes, positive culture, structured training, room for growth at all levels…”

Crew Car Wash, which has made the “Best Places to Work” list every year since 2021, has achieved a Glassdoor ranking of 4.7, with 95% of reviewers saying they would recommend it to a friend. 

“Last year, we received 104,000 applications to join the Crew Team,” says President and Chief Operating Officer Billy Schaming. “We hired 950 people. That’s about 1 in 100.”

This didn’t happen by accident. One of the first car washes in the U.S. when it was founded in 1948 by Joe and Ed Dahm, the third-generation family business has worked with Scaling Up Certified Coach Craig Overmyer, Ph.D. (known as “Dr. O” to many of his clients), co-founder of the consultancy Cultures That Work, since 2014. It has applied the Scaling Up platform throughout the organization. 

That has put it on a growth trajectory. Based in Fishers, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, Crew Car Wash has grown from 26 locations with 550 team members when it started working with Overmyer to 54 locations with 1,500 team members.  Bill Dahm, the son of one of the founders, serves as the CEO; Bill’s daughter Sally Grant, a member of the third generation, is executive vice president.

Hiring for happiness

Crew Car Wash has developed a hiring system that helps it attract A players, giving it an advantage in an industry with high turnover. It is based on four steps:

1. A digital application.
2. Initial screening by the company’s recruiting team (7 people + leader).
3. A face-to-face interview with a recruiter.
4. A final interview at the car wash with the general manager and always the area director present.

“This process ensures we’re hiring for fit, not just to fill a schedule,” says Schaming. 

The company’s number one criteria for hiring? “Happiness,” says Schaming. “Genuine happiness is one of our most important hiring principles. We’re in the people business, the customer service business—and our purpose, which Craig helped us define, is ‘To Create Smiles and Lifetime Customers.’ That came after hours of boiling things down. We started off talking about clean and shiny cars—product. But we landed on how our product makes people feel. The best way to create a smile? Ask yourself: if you smile at a baby, what happens? They always smile back. That continues throughout life.

“So, if our purpose is to create smiles, we’d better hire happy people. If people aren’t smiling walking into the interview, we ask questions to ease their nerves—but if they’re still not smiling, we’ve learned you can’t train for that.”

To make sure team members want to stay, Crew Carwash has prioritized career development and benefits, including tuition reimbursement that has become a draw for students. 

“Crew is a great place to grow your career both internally or externally,” said one reviewer on Glassdoor. “There are plenty of opportunities to grow inside the company through management and other areas. But the Crew leaders also want what is best for you and provide many benefits to help you pursue other careers, including tuition reimbursement, which makes this a great company to work for through high school and college especially.”

Cascading strategy throughout the organization

In his coaching, Overmyer has emphasized what Jim Collins has described as Strategic Cultural Alignment, which is 1% strategy and 99% alignment. After completing a One-Page Strategic Plan, the company created the Game Plan: wall posters for its locations that share its values, purpose, vision and three brand promises: “Clean, fast and friendly.” Crew Car Wash also hands out small pocket cards with this messaging. 

Executing on its Brand Promises, whatever the circumstances, is the brand’s hallmark. To reinforce the message, everyone working at the car washes wears a name badge that says, “Support team.” Even Overmyer has one. 

Underpinning Crew Car Wash’s strategy is education at the company’s training centers. The company has also created its own YouTube channel, Crew Tube. It employs a full-time videographer to share the nuances of its culture with its team members via videos they can watch on their mobile phones. 

Delivering happiness consistently

To stay on track with its goals, the company uses the Align Scoreboard to track its progress on quarterly and annual goals. The leadership team updates its Function Accountability Chart (FACe) annually to make sure it has the right people handling each function. 

Everyone on the company’s team participates in daily or weekly huddles, as well as monthly team meetings. “The leadership team is strategic and clearly communicates the strategy to everyone,” says Overmyer.

Everyone on the senior leadership team has completed the One-Page Personal Plan—focused on Friends, Family, Finance, Fitness and Faith. “If you’re concentrating on those five things personally, you’re going to be in a healthier state of mind, which will give you the ability to contribute to your organization’s purpose and the initiatives you’re trying to accomplish,” says Schaming.

Keeping cash top-of-mind

Although Crew Car Wash does not share its revenue publicly, Schaming says it is growing 10% each year with a conservative balance sheet. The leadership team is “hyper-focused” on achieving same-store growth by creating more value for the customer, he says.

Crew Car Wash has worked with Overmyer on cash-flow projections and growth planning. That focus on cash has helped as it has expanded into Minneapolis and St. Paul. Crew plans to add six additional locations this year, for a total of 60 by the end of 2025. And it is fueling the expansion with its own resources: “We’re not interested in bringing in outside investors,” says Schaming. “We’re a family business built to last.”