Nice to meet ya: Jared West

Traveling U.S. 290 west out of town, the old car wash has been resurrected and cleaning up, dirty cars that is, and making them look clean. Sometimes the owner, Jared West, cleans them with an assault rifle looking water pressure hose, bringing a lot of chatter to social media.

West was born in Fullerton, California, and at work became friends with Jesse James, the eventual owner of West Coast Choppers and now in Dripping Springs. James liked to build guns and knives, and when he moved to Dripping Springs, he invited fellow knife enthusiast and friend, West to move here.

“I’ve always lived in a house tract there was maybe 15 feet between my house and the house next to me,” said West. “And I thought, you know, here I can really spread out a little bit, and I can see what nature really has in store. Because the idea of nature in Southern California is a pristinely trimmed Park. There is no wildlife.”

“I got a flat tire when we were looking for houses the first time we came to visit,” he continued. “Two or three people actually pulled over to ask if they could help. Wow, but I didn't need any help. That would never happen where I was.”

Having sold his manufacturing business when he moved, Jared was looking for opportunities. He became friendly with the previous owner of the car wash and finally mentioned he would like to put a good, working automatic car wash in, and get rid of the old non-working one.

“All right, how about leasing me that space, and I’ll put a machine in there. And then I’ll keep the difference. You give me a flat rate that I can rent it for. And if I can promote it and make it work really well, then I’ll just keep the difference,” West offered. The owner had different plans and offered to sell the carwash and surrounding acreage, instead.

“Since September 2018 I’ve owned it. And then in October of 2018, another car wash opened over on the opposite side of town. So for 20 years, this guy sat here with no competition at all. And the month after I bought it, a $4 million carwash 15 minutes down the road. So I had to get creative about what I was going to do to keep this business,” said West.

Being creative about providing a needed service in town, now with two car washes, and then the snowstorm hit and froze everything. He was completely shut down as the systems failed.

“I wanted to keep the business alive, I didn’t want to let the community down as far as the car washing was concerned as well. So I brought out a portable pressure washer with an AR 15 rifle attachment on the end of it, and I was washing cars in a fun way with this rifle. And somebody was offended by it,” he said.

The AR 15 pressure washer was ordered online, made in Pennsylvania and very realistic looking, but totally harmless except to car dirt. The person who was offended took photographs and posted them to a Facebook group, saying how it was a bad thing and promoted violence.

“There’s hundreds and hundreds of replies on there. And people said, you just gave him a bunch of free marketing because I’m going there now. And so people were really funny about that,” said West.

Eventually, West and the offended person got together and made peace, with a free detailing thrown in. “I live by the mantra that there are no strangers in the world, that everybody is just a friend you haven’t met yet,” he said. “We posed in a photograph together with her holding the gun. And I posted it onto the same group page because I was concerned that maybe people were being too mean to her about it. I thought, you know, let’s show the folks that, that we’ve ended the dispute in an agreement and that we’re friends now.”

One boost to the business is that West now offers car detailing.

“I feel like offering detailing to the community is something that I that I started doing on a whim. I didn’t really do a bunch of studies on whether it was needed here or not. Turns out, I stepped on a goldmine or stepped on a landmine,” he said.

Drippin’ Wet is located at 1511 W Hwy 290, Dripping Springs. Their website is drippin-wet.com.