Benny Alford still shows up to work every day.
At 80, the founder of Benny’s Car Wash keeps an open door at the company’s corporate headquarters overlooking Airline Highway, greeting employees, family members and the occasional visitor seeking advice. It’s a small but telling detail in a story that spans more than seven decades of family business and industry innovation.
The roots of the business trace back to the early 1950s. Alford’s father, Lloyd Alford, opened a car wash in Pensacola, Florida, before moving to Baton Rouge and launching Florida Street Car Wash in 1953. At the time, gravel and dirt roads meant cars were often caked in mud and dust, creating steady demand for the fledgling service.
Benny Alford eventually took over the business from his father in the late 1960s after leaving college to work full time in the family operation.
Over the decades, he witnessed constant change in both automobiles and the car wash industry itself. That evolution eventually led to one of the company’s most consequential innovations.
Facing labor shortages in the 1990s, Alford and his sons began studying ways to modernize the traditional full-service model. After researching a concept in Germany that allowed customers to vacuum their own vehicles, the family developed what would become the modern express car wash system—an automated process in which drivers remain in their cars while moving through a cleaning tunnel before finishing the job themselves at vacuum stations.
The system dramatically reduced labor needs and drew attention from operators across the U.S. and around the world eager to see the model in action.
Today, Benny’s operates nine car wash locations along with oil change centers and B-Quik convenience stores. The family-led company employs roughly 440 people and continues to expand.
Even as the next generation leads daily operations, Alford remains a steady presence.
“I never wanted to be the biggest car wash,” he says. “I want to be the best-run car wash.”
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