Investing in an Autoscrubber for Your Business

Episode 89

In the world of janitorial services, efficiency and effectiveness are key to maintaining pristine floors while managing your costs. One piece of equipment that has revolutionized the cleaning industry is the Autoscrubber. Though auto scrubbers have been around for decades, they remain a valuable asset for business owners looking to enhance their cleaning operations. These machines offer significant advantages over traditional mop and bucket methods, primarily in terms of labor savings and superior cleaning quality. By understanding how Autoscrubbers operate and the benefits they provide, commercial cleaning company owners can make informed decisions. It’s all about smart investing in your future success.

Autoscrubbers Are Attractive for Customers

Autoscrubbers are designed to deliver a more sanitary clean by always working with fresh water. Unlike mops, which can reintroduce dirt and contaminants back onto the floor as they are reused, Autoscrubbers utilize a solution tank to spray clean water and cleaning solution onto the surface. A cleaning pad or brushes then scrub the floor, lifting and suspending the soils. The dirty solution is then vacuumed up and deposited into a separate waste tank. This process ensures a more hygienic environment. That alone can make it attractive to your customers. Autoscrubbers are ideal for settings that require high cleanliness standards, such as hospitals, schools, and grocery stores.

Autoscrubbers Can Save Labor

One of the most compelling reasons for you to invest in an Autoscrubber is the potential for significant labor savings. A task that might take an employee four hours to complete with a mop and bucket could be reduced to just one hour with an Autoscrubber. For commercial janitorial company owners, this translates to reduced labor costs and increased productivity. Additionally, these tools can be leased, purchased second-hand, or rented for specific projects. This makes them accessible even to smaller cleaning companies. I expect when the time comes, you’ll find the initial investment is often offset by the long-term savings in labor and maintenance costs.

When considering an Autoscrubber, it’s important to assess the specific needs of your clients’ facilities. Autoscrubbers come in various sizes, from small, handheld models for tight spaces to large, ride-on machines for expansive areas. Some modern Autoscrubbers even incorporate robotic technology. This allows them to map out cleaning routes and optimize efficiency. This adaptability means that businesses can find a model that fits their specific requirements and budget. Furthermore, the potential for depreciation write-offs and the reduction in labor hours can make Autoscrubbers a financially sound investment.

A Powerful Tool

Almost any commercial cleaning business aiming to improve its cleaning operations while reducing costs should consider an Autoscrubber. A more sanitary clean, saving labor hours, and securing flexible purchasing options, Autoscrubbers can transform how businesses maintain their facilities. The purchase of this tool can be a strategic move that pays dividends over time. If you’re considering this investment and want to explore your options further, contact me here. We don’t sell these. But I can provide valuable insights and guidance tailored to your business’s needs.

 

This Week’s Podcast transcript can be found below.

 

00:08 Ray

Joel?

 

00:09 Joel

Yes,

 

00:10 Ray.

We’re back to mechanics.

 

00:11 Joel

Mechanics?

 

00:12 Ray

Yeah. So scrubbing the floor automatically. I understand it’s an autoscrubber. Listen, you are hands down the expert on this topic. What do owners need to know?

 

00:24 Joel

Auto scrubbers are, even though they’ve been around for 30, 40, maybe even 50 years in some cases, they are a business owner’s biggest ally. Because you can get more floors cleaned with an auto scrubber than you can with a mop and bucket. Of course, there’s a cost to that, but there’s also a huge labor savings beyond it. Additional benefit that an auto scrubber does is you’re always working with clean water. So, when you work with a mop and bucket, the first dump of the mop, squeegee out and mop down, that’s great. But then when you take that mop and put it back in the bucket, now all the water is contaminated. With an auto scrubber, with the way that they’re set up, they have a solution tank. So it sprays solution onto the floor and you go over it with a cleaning. Usually, it’s a pad. Sometimes it’s brushes, depending on the type of floor, but typically a cleaning pad. And it scrubs the chemical solution on the surface, releasing all the soils and everything up into suspension. Then as the auto scrubber walks by over it, there’s a Squeegee system on the back with a wet vac. And it picks up all that dirty slurry and puts it into a waste tank.

 

01:27 Ray

Whenever my kids were younger, and we happened to come in a store. Occasionally, you would see this being done during the day hours. (Yes) They would jokingly say, Zamboni. We all know that it’s not that.

 

01:36 Joel

Well, no. A lot of clients still call it a Zamboni. (Really?) They do. They think it’s a Zamboni. It’s like, No, that cuts ice. This is a auto scrubber cleaning the floor, and it leaves a much more sanitary surface than you can with mop and bucket. The funny thing is, I was called by Contracting Profits, and I was interviewed for a subject piece. That article hit in June of 2025, and we can include a link to that in this podcast, and it goes into depth about all of it. The big thing with auto scrubbers, it is a huge time saver. It can’t be used in all facilities. You have to have the right amount of floors. You got to have it so that there’s not a lot of desk tables, chairs, anything like that that are in the way. So, think places like school hallways, large manufacturing hallways, colleges, universities, hospitals. Those types of places, grocery stores.

 

02:29 Ray

So, let me ask, as pieces of equipment go. Obviously, mop in a bucket, super simple, not much to maintain there, trade them out either when they’re dirty or used or done. A lot of mechanics. I would imagine a fair amount of maintenance with the auto scrubbers.

 

02:44 Joel

You’d be surprised. Most of them are gravity fed, so there’s not a lot. Yes, there’s a vacuum motor. Some might have a pump to release the solution. But most of the time it’s just a gravity fed to go down a tube and then spread out through a series of smaller tubes to be able to be dispersed on the floor. And auto scrubbers can range in all kinds of sizes. There’s smaller ones that are handheld that might only be a few inches wide for tighter, smaller areas, vestibules, things like that, but they’re very expensive and not always cost-effective. There’s accounts out there that my own company has. It has a small two and a half gallon tank that you actually pick up and dump out. And there’s a solution side on the front side and a waste side. So, it holds five gallons of total water all the way up to large ride-ons or even the pneumatic ones. Robots of today’s day and age that will map out a course. Some of these robotic ones are amazing because they self-teach themselves to always do a better route so it’s more cost-effective and less time being done.

 

03:47 Joel

Anybody who’s ever walked behind one and has actually cleaned the same job day after day after day. You eventually find the best route with this little movement and there’s a little fatigue on yourself in order to do it. The pneumatic ones do that themselves also.

 

04:01 Ray

Okay, now for the small cleaning company owner. At what point do you advise when you’re dealing with your customers, you have this project, it’s taking this many hours, where’s the break point that you say, It’s time to invest in this piece of equipment?

 

04:13 Joel

If you have an employee that’s spending 3-4 hours of just mopping, that might be an opportunity for a smaller auto scrubber. Now, even as a startup company, there’s ways that you can go about it. You can either lease them so that you have a monthly number that you’re being charged by the leasing company over a series of number of months. You can call a lot of your local JanSan suppliers and ask them if they sell used equipment or gently used where they’ve refurbished it because a lot of the school districts and hospitals replace it every two years. So, the equipment is still in pretty good shape. And you can get it for a used car. You can get it for a lot less and be able to do it. One company I work for, we had projects where we would just go to a rental place and rent one for the day to do a larger project. If you had a construction cleanup type situation. There are ways to make it affordable. But if you have an individual that’s spending about four hours mopping, most of these auto scrubbers will replace that four hours of mopping in only one hour’s worth of work.

 

05:12 Ray

Wow. Okay, so I guess my follow-up question to that was going to be, how do they re-address their project spec? Going back to the customer, they might not have to. I mean, there’s a cost for the equipment and operating the equipment. But then hopefully you are gaining that and more back in the time spent.

 

05:27 Joel

Because when you buy a piece of equipment, you have something called depreciation. You get to write that piece of equipment off over time. Yes, there’s going to be maintenance to it or whatever. But when you have an employee that’s doing that 4 hours a night, times 5 days a week, it’s 20 hours of just mopping. And you can cut that down to 1 hour a night. So, you’ve now saved yourself 15 hours in a week. How much do you pay that employee? What’s your tax burden on that employee? What’s your benefit package on that employee? So, when you look at it over the course of a year, how much is that and how much was the piece of equipment? So that’s something that you can do. There’s rate of return on investment calculators out there that are just for the janitorial industry. So, you can run the analysis through that. It may not be less money to a client if you’re only saving that much money, one four-hour person. But if you’re doing a store and you were going to hand mop an entire store over running an auto scrubber. That’s going to save your customer a lot of money on the end of a contract.

 

06:26 Ray

Joel I am willing to bet that there are other ways to invest in your cleaning business that you’ve got hiding in that noggin. I think it would probably be a great time to tell people who own a cleaning company that want to start making more by investing more to contact Joel. So, contact Joel.

 

06:43 Joel

Thank you, Ray.

 

00:06:44

Thanks, Joel.