Car Washing and Bike Cleaning: A Summer Business for 12 Year Olds

What you actually do

You bring a bucket, two sponges, car soap and a pile of old towels to a neighbour's driveway, and you wash their car properly. Wheels, windows, the bit under the door handles that everyone forgets. You use their hose. Forty minutes later the car is clean and you've got $20.

Bikes are the same idea in miniature. Ten minutes with a bucket and a rag, chain wiped and oiled, and a kid's bike that has sat in a garage all winter looks new again. Parents will pay $5 to $10 for that, and a family with three bikes is three jobs in half an hour.

What it costs to start

• A bottle of proper car wash soap, not dish soap, which strips the wax. About $10.
• A bucket, two sponges, a soft brush for wheels. About $15, or borrow them.
• Old towels from home, or a couple of microfibre cloths for about $10.
• A small bottle of bike chain oil, about $8, if you're doing bikes.

Somewhere between $20 and $40, and everything except the soap lasts all summer. Don't buy a pressure washer. You don't need one, and it can damage paint.

Find your first customer this Saturday

1. Wash your own family's car first, properly, so you learn how long it takes and how much soap you get through. Ask a parent to look at it afterwards and tell you what you missed, because they will spot the wheels.
2. On a sunny Saturday morning, knock on the two neighbours you know best. Say: "I'm washing cars today, $20, and I'll be done in about forty minutes." Most people say yes, because the car is right there and so are you.
3. While you wash, someone walking past will ask. That's customer three.

If you want bike customers, a note at the school or the rink saying "Bike clean and chain oil, $8, Saturdays at the park" works, because that's where the bikes already are.

What to charge

Price by size, and say the price before you start.

A normal car is $20. A pickup or an SUV that takes longer is $25 or $30. Inside and out, vacuum included, is $35 to $40, but only offer that if you can borrow a vacuum. Bikes are $5 for a kid's bike and $10 for an adult one with the chain oiled.

Say you and a friend do six cars on a Saturday at $20. That's $120, minus about $5 of soap, split two ways. Do that every Saturday in July and August and you've each earned around $450 for eight mornings' work.

Check what the drive-through wash near you charges. You're allowed to be cheaper and better, and you probably are.

Rules and staying safe

Show this to a parent.

• Work on the customer's driveway, not on the road. A car parked on a street is next to traffic, and a kid with a bucket is easy to miss.
• Ask before you use a hose or an outdoor tap, and turn it off when you're done. Some towns have watering rules in dry summers. A parent can check.
• Don't wash the engine, don't open the hood, and don't touch anything inside the car unless you've agreed to do the interior.
• Work in pairs when you can. It's faster, safer and more fun.
• Sunscreen and a hat. A morning on a driveway in July will burn you.
• Take payment in cash, or by e-transfer to a parent's account, when the car is done and the customer has looked at it.

If you scratch something, say so straight away, and tell a parent too. Nobody expects a 13 year old to be perfect. They do expect you to be honest, and a customer who hears it from you rather than finding it next week stays a customer.

Two things are worth knowing before your first Saturday. Dish soap strips the wax off paint, so use car soap even though it costs more. And a dry sponge dragged over a dusty panel is what puts fine scratches in it, so rinse the car first and keep the sponge wet.

What Jenny would do

Jenny is 16 and lives in a small town where half the cars are pickup trucks covered in the dust of the gravel roads. She'd charge $25 for the trucks and not apologise for it, because the trucks take longer. She'd team up with her younger brother for the bikes, which he can do while she does the cars.

She'd pick a spot: the parking lot by the rink on a Saturday morning in summer, with a hand-painted sign, since that's something she's good at. People come to her instead of her going door to door, and that's a channel decision, which is a whole lesson in Module 5.

When it stops being fun

Rain. A customer who wants the car "like new" for $20 when it hasn't been washed since 2019. Soap in your eye. A Saturday when the beach is where everyone else is.

Set a rule for yourself before the first Saturday. Something like: two hours in the morning, then I'm done. A business with an end time is one you'll still be running in August.