Soaring Energy Costs to Hit Dirty Laundry Baskets
USA: October 24, 2005
NEW YORK - The cost of airing your dirty laundry in public is about to go up.
It is not only the motorist who has been socked in the wallet by soaring energy prices -- people who use Laundromats will also feel like they have been taken to the cleaners this winter.
Natural gas, propane and electricity prices continue their march to new heights, and with those higher prices come higher utility bills for retail laundry centers -- much, much higher.
"We're a business that absolutely lives on utilities and essentially reselling utilities to our customers through the use of our facilities," said Brian Wallace, chief executive of the Coin Laundry Association.
The association represents about 14 percent of the 35,000 "retail self-service laundries" throughout the country. Its members are now contending with the prospect of both having to raise prices and install more efficient machines in order to make ends -- to say nothing of socks -- meet.
Some are raising wash prices in small increments, while others are adjusting dryer cycles, giving not the national average eight minutes per 25 cents but rather anywhere from five to seven minutes. (Or setting the start price at 50 cents.)
"The Catch-22 is that ours is really an industry that serves a segment of the population that can really least afford price increases," said Patti Andresen-Shew, a spokeswoman for Alliance Laundry Holdings LLC, owner of the well-known Laundromat brand SpeedQueen.
Alliance's customers, like many in the industry, are switching to more energy-efficient machines that use less hot water and give greater control over the length and the temperature of cycles.
"You're seeing the trend toward more front-load equipment, whether that be on the washing side or the drying side," Andresen-Shew said.
NEW MACHINES NOT A CURE-ALL
But there are some trade-offs with energy-efficient machines, among them that such units tend to run slower, or at lower temperatures.
"I could put in one of these 40-minute dryers, but I would lose customers," said Thomas Rhodes, owner of Sunshine Coin Laundries, a Florida chain. "People, they want to get in and out of a Laundromat. They don't want to sit there an extra 10 minutes because you've lowered the temperature 10 degrees."
Rhodes, whose family started the seven-store chain in 1977, is part of a group that buys propane for fuel under a long-term contract with caps. That group has been paying around the cap price of $1.18 per gallon for five months now, he said, though people outside the group are paying market rates about $1.40.
But for lack of any other relief Rhodes and some of his colleagues are considering alternatives like solar -- not hanging laundry out on a line in the sun like the old days, but solar panels for electricity.
"We're going to seriously consider taking advantage of some of the credits the government is offering," he said.
With other energy-intensive pursuits like driving or home heating, people can sometimes cut back to keep their costs down. But with a sweaty T-shirt or a stained pair of pants, there really is no option.
"Really what we're providing is a basic public health service," the Coin Laundry Association's Wallace said. "The fact of the matter is, dirty laundry has to be done. It's not something that can be rationed or put off until energy prices come down."
Story by Ben Berkowitz
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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