All other automotive repair and maintenance
This Canadian industry comprises establishments, not classified to any other Canadian industry, primarily engaged in providing motor vehicle repair and maintenance. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A
- Establishments · CanadaA
- 1,216
- Under 10 employeesA
- 74%
Size and shape
How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.
Canadian establishments by number of employeesA
Of 1,216 Canadian establishments with employees, 74% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Where they areA
Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.
How businesses here compete
The structural profile of subsector 811, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.
Technician supply is the business. Auto repair is being consolidated; commercial and industrial equipment repair is steadier and sold on uptime rather than price.
- Who sets the price
- Posted labour rates and the customer's alternative of replacing rather than repairing.
- The software it runs on
- Shop management with parts catalogues and labour guides; field service for commercial equipment.
Market screens and studies
Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.
Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 81119 Other automotive repair and maintenance covers it.
The incumbent is a listed conglomerate's $965M purchase, and it sits in the tunnel, not just on the counter. DRB Systems (Akron, Ohio; founded 1984) sells the point of sale (SiteWatch, Patheon, Washify, Sierra for in-bay), the tunnel controller (TunnelWatch), pay stations and queuing cameras. Vontier (NYSE: VNT) bought it from New Mountain Capital in 2021 for about $965M in cash, on expected 2021 revenue of about $170M, ~40% recurring, at mid-20% operating margins [A]. DRB had already bought Washify, the cloud POS challenger, in March 2021 [B]. Its home page says it is trusted by "more top 50 conveyor car wash chains than all other technology providers combined" [C, vendor]. Vontier no longer breaks DRB out: it sits inside Mobility Technologies ($1,123.9M FY2025 sales), where management said car wash growth "accelerated" in Q4 2025 [A]. The other seats belong to the equipment makers. Sonny's (conveyor equipment, controls, pay stations and the Quivio management suite; Genstar Capital since August 2020, 6,000+ active customers at the time) [B] bought GoToKiosk in 2020 and WashMetrix in 2025 [B]. ICS went to Dover's OPW in a deal announced January 2021 [B]. Hamilton Manufacturing (pay stations, LPR and RFID, since 1921) and Micrologic Associates (a New Jersey POS and controller vendor, now selling WashCentral) are long-standing independents [C]. When an operator buys a tunnel, the controller and pay station tend to come with it. The venture money went on top of the POS, not into it. Rinsed, a membership CRM, has raised $35M (Series B $20M led by VMG Technology, April 2023; earlier Bedrock Capital, Founders Fund, Y Combinator) [B]. It now claims 3,000+ washes and 10M+ active members [C, vendor] and integrates with the POS rather than replacing it. EverWash (Philadelphia) runs a membership network across partner washes on $11M disclosed, including $5M of debt [B]. FlexWash sells a cloud POS + CRM + LPR that integrates with existing controllers "so you can switch… without rewiring your tunnel" [C, vendor]. That is the only replacement wedge we saw, and its funding is not reported by any outlet we could open. The buyer is consolidating and levered. Mister Car Wash (548 locations, about 2.3M Unlimited Wash Club members, 76% of wash sales from members [A]) was taken private by Leonard Green & Partners at about $3.1B enterprise value, completed May 2026 [B]. Whistle Express (Oaktree) bought about 380 sites from Driven Brands for $385M in April 2025, which took it to about 530 [B]. In the same period Zips filed Chapter 11 with $654M of debt [B]. Chains of that size pick one POS for hundreds of sites and negotiate hard; the long tail is served by the equipment vendor that built its tunnel. Incumbent vulnerability decides it. DRB is well capitalised, owns the controller layer and already bought its main cloud challenger, and the membership-CRM wedge is already funded and taken by Rinsed.
The economics are a subscription business bolted to a $3–6M construction project: Mister Car Wash crossed $1B of revenue in 2025 on roughly 2.3 million Unlimited Wash Club members, and that membership base is the whole model. A single-site entrant carries the full build cost before the first membership, in metros where the same thesis has already been funded several times over and tunnels sit within sight of each other. Land, water recycling and equipment are the business; the wash is the marketing.
Software serving this industry
The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.
Sold across the wider branch
And what every business buys · 25 generic categories
Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.
Who works here
The occupations employed in Other services (except public administration), most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.
Concentrated in this sectorA
These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.
And the jobs every business has
Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 74% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.
Alongside this industry
This is the most specific level NAICS defines. The other industries under 81119 are its nearest neighbours.
| Code | Industry | Establishments · CA | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 811192 | Car washes | 1,685 | Car Wash Management & Membership SoftwareExpress Car Wash Site Operation |