CATEGORIES: BRUSHLESS CLEANING - POLISHED ALUMINUM - ALUMINUM BRIGHTENERS - RECLAIM SOAP - DEGREASING - CONCENTRATE VS. POWDERS

BRUSHLESS CLEANING

Brushless Truck Washing Washing a vehicle without brushing can be a complex set of factors. Often we hear the argument "well my customers demand we brush". This is a convenient argument that given my 30 years washing experience I find very hard to believe. What is easy to believe is several things: you will use more chemicals brushless than brushing, what the customer wants is a clean and shining vehicle,brushing as accomplished by humans and even machines is an inherently inefficient

Just to reiterate an important point when we are talking about brushless we are not being absolutist, you will still carry a brush generally for glass, mirror backs, chrome, or heavy grease in spots. The point is Do not use the brush to achieve the bulk of your clean, use it to dress the finished product where it is more efficient to do so. I guess we should really be talking about chemical release cleaning versus agitation release cleaners, even agitation release cleaners use some type of chemistry though its' point may only be to lubricate

Many washers engage in a self defeating escalation of GPM and PSI. In the mistaken belief that in all things bigger is better. The greater the volume of water the greater the amount of soap pulled to keep the dilutions at a brushless level. In many states they already know the greater the volume the more you have to recover. The greater the volume and the higher the PSI the greater the stress on the operator and the more likely they are to rest, letting the machine idle (bad for the machine) and the efficiency suffers. The greater the volume the greater the amount of water needed to feed

the units. If you are a single person operation we heavily recommend looking at a 4 gallon per minute machine. If you are using down stream injection, the best for one person, this automatically means you need 20% less soap to achieve your 10:1 brushless dilution. I personally almost always used a 2-person setup because I specialized in production work rather than detail work. I just felt that so much efficiency was lost in the chemical switching and using more soap than needed or having to wait to get a little more to rehit something that I would rather find jobs that we could set up and run for a while and just use two machines, one for soap at 3 gallon per minute and 1000 PSI. machine that had a detachable coil that was added in winter to heat up the soap, and one for rinse a 4 gal per minute at 2000 PSI unit. We found that generally with a brushless soap and a good soaper the rinser had a hard time keeping up. The smaller unit was run with quarter inch nylon braided hose so 150 ft of it was very light and very easy to move, also the lower PSI and GPM allowed much easier one handed operation so that the operator was free to manipulate the hose around the vehicles. The rinser had to use 5/8 inch steel braided hose and it was much bulkier and harder to move. This meant two things, we needed a soap that could safely dry on the surface also that there was plenty of time to use the double soap application. I now have a small cold water three gal/min 1200-PSI machine that down streams at 10:1. My old 3 GPM machine applied soap under high pressure this helped in certain situations such as winter when a lot of salt and sand film had built on the fenders and also on the bugs in the summer. The two stepping industry was built on high-pressure soap application in combination with a dual chemical acid/alkaline system. One other effective soap application system for brushless cleaning is the low-pressure, chemical dedicated pump system.

Darren applies the soap with the low pressure applicator. His instructions are to move consistently. Their dilution of 16 ounces of soap into 6 gallons of water guarantees the cleaning performance.	This picture of soap overspray demonstrates the drastic reduction of waste and water with this system. The low foaming and oil floating nature of the soap make it excellent for recovery.	Rinsing off the soap with out brushing. Dan gets spot free shine and total film release at a price lower than the cost of brushing.

This system involves prediluting your soap and putting it on at 100 PSI or so at very low volumes such as 1.2 GPM. This achieves tremendous soap efficiency though the system seems a little slower to me it is very cost effective for a private operation or if you are recovering. If recovering the amount of waste generated while soaping with this system is ounces per truck. Meaning it contributes virtually zero waste to the recovery system Single step safe is the most difficult clean to achieve. We do this type of cleaning with Dazzle. 10:1 to 20:1 dilution is recommended being applied one of the ways described above. Dazzle gives you tremendous shine and safety on polished aluminum. The only caution is that on heavily filmed vehicles a good accurate rinse is very important. The power in this type of soap entails a critical balance of surfactants to break the bond without being aggressive on sensitive surfaces such as polished aluminum. It does not release the film if casually rinsed. Single step caustic driven products for brushless washing are Sizzle and LCS. Dilutions for the Sizzle are 20:1 to 50:1. Dilutions for the LCS start at 50:1 and go to 100:1. These products have unbuffered caustic in them and while they are good on grease and brighten aluminum they are aggressive on paint and begin to chalk it after 50 to 100 washes. Do not let these products dry on the surface because the water is evaporated off in the process leaving the very aggressive raw materials to do severe damage to the surface. This is especially true of the brown soap Sizzle. Sizzle is very good on trailers and tractors without polished aluminum LCS is a good choice for stainless steel tankers with food oil, latex's, and assorted other difficult to clean soils. Two step alkaline is a process of laying one application of soap over top of another one. This gives tremendous film and stain release with the right product. For many people from coast to coast the right product is Glory Truckwash.

1. Notice stains before cleaning	2. High pressure Glory application
3. Glory cleaning the surface	4. Glory Drying on the truck

This extraordinary accomplishment is not recommended, but this series of pictures documents the process and results and demonstrates the ability of Glory to dry on the surface without causing problems. This is an extremely important benefit when your environment is hot and you want to clean brushlessly.

5. Glory dried without damage

Any soap can really benefit from the double soap application but only Glory Truckwash can do it with complete safety on every surface but polished aluminum. This is the product that really enables you to go brushless and to do it without fear. This product can dry on the surface and not set stains. It will always rinse off and leave a shine. Glory is the only product that allows you to brush remove some bugs or a stain and not have to worry about the brush mark showing up afterwards. Dilutions for this application are between 10:1 to 20:1. The surfactants that allow Glory to dry on the surface and rinse right off cannot take high heat so keep your water temperature below 125°F. Any soaping process should proceed from the worst area to the best. In a double soap you generally start on the worst end go towards the other end and return this allows for dwell time and you finish with another application on the presoftened areas. If you are using downstream you would always use the high-pressure soap from the rinse switch to hit bad areas and then you would still allow them to soak and rinse them last; unless it was the buggy airdam a top a tractor and then the rinse would start there. Rinsing is very quick and easy with Glory. Two step acid/alkali is a very popular system in fixed site applications. Car washes use our First Step Acid (a non-hydrofluoric product) and our Dazzle. Both at 70:1 from the blenders concentrate. A safe for polished aluminum system would use our HD Sabre and Dazzle at 70:1 each from the blenders concentrate. Stainless steel tankers positively glow when using HD Sabre and Glory Truckwash at 50:1 each from the blenders concentrate. A very aggressive system would use Brite 10 and Sizzle at 70:1 to 100:1 from the blenders concentrate and kit product. All these combinations can be reversed with soap applied first and this may be a benefit in hard water areas.

Garbage Truck Story
For years we had the contract to wash the garbage trucks for the city of Pittsburgh, PA. Executing a bid bond, dealing with bureaucracy and politics in a city bid, and reclaiming wash waste were three hard learned lessons from this contract. The lessons we want to explain here deal with the benefits of better chemistry and the need for constant refinement during the washing process. When we first started the annual contract the city was washing the garbage trucks only once a month and the fleet looked neglected. The city had over a hundred garbage trucks involved and due to a problem with verifying how many trucks were washed by the contractor, the bid requested that all of the trucks be washed over the same weekend. To accommodate this request we would start the washing process on a Friday afternoon and were still working on Monday or Tuesday. It took almost 40 hours to remove all the clay (from landfills) and grease. Paint damage from the prior use of heavily caustic soaps also made the trucks harder to clean. After washing the garbage trucks approximately 20 times, we increased our speed by 10% to 15% but still had not found a system that made us profitable and fast even though we had tried several different approaches.

Unsolved problem washing issues included:

What this partial list above shows are the everyday problems of the truckwasher. Struggling to do a good job and make a living in the world of the low bidder. These issues and others made meeting this challenge and achieving both excellence and a profit very difficult. Any excellent system appears elegantly simple after it has been perfected, but innovation requires change and often continual experimentation to arrive at simplicity. The first change that was initiated was driving the trucks to the fuel island and parking them three abreast with ten feet in-between. This solved a host of problems including the water supply, truck access, and equipment movement problems. We had one man drive and brush on degreaser, another one strictly applied soap and the third rinsed. We were able to now repeat this sequence readily. The second change occurred through the use of a new cleaner that was a safe truckwash/degreaser. Originally the cleaner being used was a strong hydroxide-butyl soap. The problems associated with this type of cleaner are slow rinsing , film on the glass and paint, stain setting if it dried, and the soap really didn't clean well overall. The new cleaner "Plus" which cost $100 per drum more was not a high caustic-butyl cleaner. Applied strong through a 3 gpm. machine it cleaned the surface brushlessly which saved time and labor. The final results produced a win-win situation for us and the city. We were able to produce excellent results at a reduced cost by cutting the wash time down to 12 hours. Using one trucks and three people over two days meant that a lot more time was free to do other jobs. The customer noticed the excellent appearance of the trucks and authorized the trucks to be washed twice a month. The changes that were made cut production time and labor costs by 66% and enabled us to provide excellence to the customer at a reduced cost and a much greater profit. We had spent more for soap but what went up was customer satisfaction and profits, what went down was time and expenses. The conclusions drawn from this experience is that the search for excellence includes questioning and examining all of the possibilities. Do not set arbitrary road blocks that keep you from success in attaining your goals. Good quality soap properly applied, is not only inexpensive, but may be the cheapest and easiest investment you can make in excellence and profitability in the truckwashing challenge.

Opportunity Knocks
With the advent of stricter governmental and environmental regulations on maintaining and controlling hazardous substances, the 18-wheelers and tankers that transport these materials today are generally much cleaner in appearance than those of yesterday. This change has opened the door for brushless truck cleaning as a viable option for both fixed site and mobile wash operators. With heavy stains and drips no longer completely enveloping the rails and sides of trucks, a brush is no longer a prerequisite for any cleaning contractor. Yet, finding the right product to take advantage of this opportunity has been difficult for many contractors. Most soaps that are strong enough to pull the remaining stains from a fiberglass trailer will likely have an undisirab;e effect on polished aluminum. The solution? EaCo Chem's Truck Was Supreme SC. While we can't make the claim that TWS is a completely safe brushless product for polished aluminum, we do feel that it can be used brushlessly most of the time. Even more important, in those instances where you will need to spot brush due to a difficult stain, TWS will not leave any marks after rinsing. In other words, your customers won't be able to tell the brushed areas from the brushless ones.