Where Service To Motorist Rules

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• David, the Bank of Canada does not use just one or two unscientific criteria to determine inflation, as you have done here (first with the price of a pickup truck in a How Stuff Works article and again with a CEO's wage in a magazine article).

• I'm not talking about inflation, I'm talking about people spending relative to their salaries. If these two figures were readily available from a government website in a google search, I would quote them and I'm sure they'd be very similar.

• John, thanks for investigating, and being our on the street reporter. I'm glad you check them out. Next time I'm due for a wash, I'll have to head over and check it out. After all to be in business for 79 years, you must be doing something right!

  - David, like it or not, that's how things are calculated in today's dollars. The prices of things relative to your salary have always fluctuated.

• Also - Just looking over the Bank of Canada inflation calculator figues, $1.25 in 1929 = $15.30 in 2008.

  $15.30 + PST & GST = $17.29, John reports that he spent $17.00 taxes inc. So, their prices are actually below the inflation rate, and have kept par over the last eight decades.

  Amazing.

• I just remember my grandfather using that car wash, when I was with him a couple of times back in the mid fifties, I thought it a neat place then. Can't tell you much than that about it. Thanks for posting it Andrew!

• I know I may be dating myself but as kids we would go over to that car wash- they had a window where clients could watch the cars being washed along the line- it was a very cool place...

• Gee Walkerpub, you really are a geezer! : )

• Now be nice; one day you'll be in your 40s too!

• I took a weekend job there back in 1962 when I was in High School. I was back there a few months ago and it looked exactly the same as it did then. So, as John pointed out, it was definitely built on the same footprint. One difference is that it is more automated now, There was one area we called "the pits". There was a trench two people worked in with power hot water hoses to steam clean the tires and wheel wells. There were also troughs of hot soapy water used to hand clean (with the appropriate gloves) the tires and rocker panels of the vehicle after you finished with your "steam guns". There were mornings there in Winter when you had to break the ice in the troughs. Oh yeah! You didn't get an hourly rate. You got a percentage of the business done that day. Good days, good pay. Bad rainy or snowy days you could go home with little or nothing.

  One more thing. If you go - in the area on the other side of the line your vehicle is on, there used to be another 'line'- the truck line. The track must have been cemented over. This was for larger vehicles such as bread and milk trucks.

  For the life of me, except for the items I've mentioned, I can see no difference from 1962.

  The outside of the building didn't look anything like the 1929 photo back in '62 but he price of a car wash wasn't all that much more.

  WalkerPub, if your from my era, you may have seen me in the pits!

• A Postscript,
  When I said that the building I knew back in '62 didn't resemble the pic from 1929, further jogging of a 46 year old memory yields different results. When I was back a few months ago the building was yellow brick, whereas I remember a red brick building. So, it may very well be the same building but the "Complete Lubricating" section was, to my knowledge no longer associated with Speedy.The surname of the fellow who owned it back then was Parr.