Autowash Reduced MTTR by 74% with MaintainX AI

Key results

• Mean time to repair (MTTR) dropped by 74%, saving the company more than $3M in downtime costs
• Reactive work orders decreased by 15%
• Labor productivity increased by 5 percentage points, valued at an estimated $50k

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For Autowash, what started as a search for a ticketing system turned into something much bigger.

Autowash has spent the last 14 years building a network of car washes across Colorado’s Front Range. Today, the company runs 26 locations supported by a 30,000-square-foot warehouse and a 24-vehicle service fleet.

At first, Autowash simply sought a more efficient way to log service issues. But as the complexity of sharing information across locations grew, the team needed a system that could help them standardize work, measure progress, and preserve knowledge.

“When we got MaintainX, it changed pretty much everything,” says Richard McLamb, Autowash’s senior area manager. “It made it a lot easier for us to track, follow up, and complete work on time, and learn from past mistakes or problems. We use it every day, religiously, in literally everything we do. I think we’d be lost without it.”

Erin Dreeszen, founder and owner of Autowash, applauds how MaintainX has given the team a shared view of operations. “MaintainX is the operational truth for what’s happening around the whole company,” she says.

Challenges

Disconnected tools

Before MaintainX, Autowash relied on a combination of spreadsheets, handwritten work orders, voicemails, forms, and Teams channels to manage maintenance requests. This meant the team struggled with fragmented communication and inconsistent tracking.

“We wanted a ticketing system, plain and simple,” Erin says. “What we were using before was embedded in Microsoft Teams, and each location had its own channel. Every day people were posting things that would get lost in the mix. And it didn’t allow us a clear way to prioritize needs.”

Scattered data

The company also lacked a clean way to look back at maintenance history and identify patterns. Without centralized data, it was difficult to move from reacting to problems to preventing them.

“We wanted the ability to track and look at data. [MaintainX] allows us to go back and see when the last preventive maintenance was done, or the last time a pump went out, and find trends,” Richard says.

Siloed knowledge

Prior to adopting MaintainX, the team’s troubleshooting process involved calling the right person and waiting for a response.

This slowed down repairs, made onboarding new technicians more difficult, and created inconsistencies across locations. If a technician learned something useful about a machine at one site, that knowledge didn’t automatically help the rest of the network.

Why MaintainX

A flexible platform

Autowash chose MaintainX in part because they could customize it to fit the way their teams already worked.

“We customized everything to match how our team functions and the vernacular they use, to make sure it was easy to adopt,” Erin explains.

MaintainX felt natural for technicians to use while still providing the structure the company needed to scale.

Built to grow with the business

Autowash was also looking for a partner that could keep up with the team’s pace of innovation.

“We like to call ourselves super users,” Erin says. “We like to break software, use it to its full capacity, and find ways to actually make it do things it’s not necessarily intended to do in order to meet our needs. MaintainX has been a great partner in helping us stretch the software’s capabilities.”

Autowash didn’t want another system it would outgrow. “To continue to grow the next iteration of the carwash world, we look for software that can keep up with us,” Erin explains. “We felt like MaintainX was very much it.”

Powerful AI features

MaintainX’s ability to turn documentation into something technicians could consult in real time was also compelling to the team.

“MaintainX AI excites us because it allows the guys to learn from manuals and resources that they need to read but never actually want to read,” Erin says. “I’ve seen it as a way to pull back the curtain and share knowledge the guys have without them having to actually lift their fingers. Instead, they can focus on the repairs in front of them.”

Autowash uploaded manuals, guides, and asset-specific resources into MaintainX, creating a foundation for MaintainX AI to help technicians find answers faster. For a company operating across multiple locations, this was key to scaling the team’s expertise.

Results

Faster repairs and more proactive work

MaintainX gave Autowash the data and structure to improve their core maintenance performance.

The team introduced clear status tracking and priority rules for service tickets. If an issue was visible to customers and affected the wash process, they designated it as high priority and expected it to be resolved within 48 hours.

Once the team could tie those expectations to better tracking and better data with MaintainX, results followed. Autowash has decreased MTTR by 74% since implementing MaintainX, which has saved the company more than $3 million in downtime costs. 

They also reduced reactive work orders by 15%, showing meaningful progress toward a more proactive maintenance culture.

Quick access to reliable answers

AI-powered technician support through has also helped Autowash foster continuous improvement.

In the past, a repair might stall while someone waited for a more experienced coworker to respond. Now, technicians can pull up manuals and ask MaintainX AI to find the exact section or guidance they need without leaving the workflow.

This changed the speed of execution, especially for less familiar repairs. If a technician is replacing a pump for the first time, for example, they no longer have to rely on someone else’s availability. Instead, they can access step-by-step support directly in the system.

Knowledge retention

For Autowash, one of the biggest benefits of MaintainX AI is its power to collect and share knowledge.

“In the old times, we were going off people’s word and what they had in their heads, so we were never really moving forward because people would come and go,” Richard explains. “With MaintainX AI, it’s indefinitely holding the information and improving, so anybody can learn at any time. That’s what makes it super valuable for us.”

This is especially important in a distributed operation. Previously, one location might solve a problem without that solution reaching other locations. Now, the company can make that information useful across the network.

Higher standards for performance

By making performance data visible across teams, MaintainX has helped Autowash teams build accountability. 

“It’s allowed us to hold a higher standard than before,” Richard says. “We couldn’t wrap our heads around everything in spreadsheets or forms. Now, we can keep track of all work and actually complete it, so it’s raised our standard quite a bit.”

The company also gained better tools for recognizing employee effort and supporting development.

Overall, these cultural changes contributed to a labor productivity increase of around 5 percentage points, valued at approximately $50k.

One user-friendly, connected system

MaintainX has become a central operational platform for Autowash. The company manages warehouse workflows, parts requests, and purchase orders inside the system. Locations place orders through MaintainX procedures, and warehouse staff can scan QR codes with their phones to access parts information, spec sheets, and documentation.

“We like to meet our employees where they are,”  Erin says. “Let’s not give them a whole bunch of extra stuff that’s complicated.”

Looking ahead

Autowash is preparing for a major transformation in its next chapter, which will involve a large equipment changeover across its network. The company is already working to build global templates for the rollout.

MaintainX AI will become even more valuable during this transition, as all technicians will need to learn something new at the same time. Autowash plans to preload documentation and resources into MaintainX so new equipment knowledge is immediately accessible. 

As the company prepares for its next phase of innovation, MaintainX is helping them minimize uncertainty.

According to Erin, “I don't think we would feel confident in making a multi-million dollar equipment shift without having the data and the ability to track what's coming. MaintainX is a resource that's absolutely allowing us to have confidence in communication across the network so nothing falls through the cracks.”