Wert-Berater, Inc. prepared an independent six-site investment feasibility study for a proposed freestanding commercial truck wash in Northeast Ohio, evaluating candidate locations across four counties on fleet demand, corridor traffic, competitive gap, access, financial performance, and development risk. Applying weighted multi-criteria decision analysis, fatal-flaw screening, a bottom-up FMCSA fleet-demand model, and a 5,000-iteration Monte Carlo simulation, the study identified a Mahoning County site along a major interstate corridor as the clear first-ranked candidate. That recommended site was the only location among the six to clear a 15 percent equity IRR in the base case and held its top ranking under every weighting variant tested.
Wert-Berater, Inc. was engaged to independently evaluate the investment feasibility of a proposed freestanding commercial truck wash in the Northeast Ohio market and to recommend which of six candidate locations across the region best supported capital commitment. The intended users were the sponsor's board of directors and investment committee, and the study was prepared exclusively for internal capital-allocation decision support — not as a lending application, appraisal, or permitting opinion. The firm held no ownership interest in any candidate site, and compensation was not contingent on any predetermined conclusion.
The subject concept is a two-to-three-bay facility built around an automated drive-through portal, with one hybrid manual/automated bay and a dedicated trailer-interior washout stall carrying food-grade documentation capability. An enclosed pre-wash preparation zone and a water-reclamation system targeting 80 to 85 percent recycling are incorporated into the base program. Each site was evaluated on a consistent 18-hour operating day and approximately 350 effective operating days per year, so that no candidate benefited from a more favorable operating assumption than any other.
The study applied twelve named analytical methods: fatal-flaw screening against eleven minimum site conditions; weighted multi-criteria decision analysis anchored to six fixed evidence categories (fleet demand 25%, corridor traffic 20%, access 15%, competition 15%, financial feasibility 15%, and zoning/development risk 10%); an Analytic Hierarchy Process pairwise-comparison consistency-ratio check to validate those weights independently; a bottom-up FMCSA/MCMIS fleet-demand model drawing on 3,839 active-carrier records; a corridor traffic-intercept model; competitive supply-demand gap analysis corroborated by independently verified third-party location data; access and queueing analysis using Little's Law as a planning-level capacity screen; facility-program cost-fit analysis with a site-by-site development cost build-up; DSCR-constrained hypothetical debt sizing; sensitivity and interest-rate stress testing; a 5,000-iteration Monte Carlo simulation; and evidence-confidence scoring applied to every figure throughout the report.
Competitor locations and distances were verified against third-party location data rather than accepted from client-supplied estimates; two client-provided distance figures were corrected in the process, and one unresolved competitor-identity conflict was disclosed explicitly and excluded from scoring until independently confirmed. Where a client-supplied fact and an independently verified fact conflicted, both were disclosed rather than silently reconciled. A full-formula audit across more than 2,500 formulas confirmed zero errors in the companion financial workbook.
Six candidate locations were ranked across the four-county Northeast Ohio study area. One candidate failed the study's fatal-flaw screen outright on the development-cost-in-range criterion, with an estimated all-in cost above the study's planning threshold; consistent with the fatal-flaw methodology, no strength on any other criterion was permitted to offset that disqualifying finding. The remaining five sites all received conditional passes on the fatal-flaw screen and proceeded to weighted scoring.
The Mahoning County site along a major interstate freight corridor ranked first with a weighted score of approximately 83 out of 100 and was the only candidate to clear a 15 percent equity IRR in the base case, generating approximately $1.8 million in Year 3 revenue and approximately $666,000 in EBITDA at a margin near 37 percent. Its first-place rank held under every weighting variant tested, making it the most rank-stable candidate in the comparison. The study recommended advancing this site to parcel-level, traffic, utility, and fleet-interview diligence as the lead candidate, with two secondary-tier candidates advanced in parallel and two additional sites held pending the outcome of that field work.
Ten-year, year-by-year pro formas were developed for all six candidates under low, base, and high volume scenarios, with revenue modeled across three segments: fleet-contract exterior washes (primary), spot and retail exterior washes (secondary), and trailer-interior washouts with food-grade documentation (tertiary, higher-margin). The recommended site was the only candidate whose base-case financial performance cleared a 15 percent equity IRR; the next two ranked sites produced positive EBITDA but equity returns in the mid-single digits, while the disqualified candidate was EBITDA-negative throughout the ten-year projection.
Principal risks identified include fleet-conversion risk — every site's fleet-penetration assumption is a planning-level estimate rather than a measured conversion rate and is the largest single driver of Monte Carlo spread — competitive-response risk in corridors where the demand gap is identifiable to potential new entrants, regulatory and permitting risk associated with Ohio EPA permit-to-install and indirect-discharge permit requirements for the water-reclamation system, and fleet-account concentration risk at certain candidates with fewer, larger accounts. Mitigations recommended include obtaining nonbinding fleet-account volume indications before any land closing, early regulatory engagement before design finalization, and deliberate account diversification in the fleet-contract sales effort.
A fatal-flaw screen tests each candidate site against a set of minimum non-negotiable conditions — such as legal access, zoning compatibility, utility availability, cost-in-range, and environmental constraints — before any weighted scoring is applied. A site that fails even one fatal criterion is eliminated from further consideration regardless of how favorably it scores on all other measures. This prevents a strong financial projection or traffic count from masking a fundamental development impediment.
Weighted multi-criteria decision analysis converts several differently-scaled evaluation criteria into a single comparable score per site. Each criterion is assigned a fixed weight reflecting its relative importance, raw site-level data is normalized to a common scale, and the weighted scores are summed. The result is a transparent, auditable ranking in which every input can be traced back to a specific data source, and no single favorable metric can carry a site's rank on its own.
In Salt-Belt states, highway de-icing agents applied from November through March or April accelerate corrosion of chassis, brake lines, and underbody components, creating a maintenance-driven washing requirement that operates on a predictable seasonal calendar rather than a discretionary one. Additional structural drivers include FMCSA inspection standards that incentivize fleet cleanliness, food-grade trailer washout documentation requirements, and shipper-imposed cleanliness standards embedded in carrier freight contracts — all of which persist through economic cycles independently of discretionary consumer spending.
Published commercial vehicle wash market-size figures from third-party research aggregators vary widely, often reflect passenger-vehicle scope rather than heavy-duty truck scope, and are derived from methodologies that are not independently verifiable. A bottom-up model built from carrier-level registration data specific to each trade area — such as FMCSA/MCMIS carrier records filtered by county — produces a demand estimate that is traceable to a named federal source, reproducible, and calibrated to the actual fleet density around each candidate site rather than extrapolated from a national market estimate of uncertain provenance.
President, Wert-Berater, Inc. — independent feasibility study consultants since 1998. More than 4,000 feasibility studies completed across all 50 states and internationally, evaluating $40.2 billion in project value for SBA, USDA, EB-5, conventional, and institutional financing decisions. Fiduciary duty runs to the lender and agency in every engagement.
+1 310-857-2443 ext. 800 · email · 1968 South Coast Hwy, Ste 2382, Laguna Beach, CA 92651 · 111 Town Square Pl Ste 1238 PMB 657834, Jersey City, NJ 07310 · 539 W. Commerce St #8486, Dallas, TX 75208 · 66 W Flagler Street, Suite 900, PMB 12704, Miami, FL 33130
Schedule a ConversationIndependent feasibility studies since 1998 — 4,000+ engagements, $40.2 billion in evaluated project value. Standard delivery in 10 to 15 business days. Fiduciary duty to the lender and agency.