Drive-through truck wash
Nothing waits for the machine.
The brushes are fixed and the vehicle rolls through them at walking pace. Nobody parks, nobody lines up on rails, and the next vehicle is already moving before the last one is clear of the arch.
Against a gantry
Same brushes. The difference is what moves.
A travelling gantry is the better buy for most depots: one bay, less length, less civil work, and it will wash anything you park under it. Drive-through earns its extra length in exactly one situation — when vehicles arrive faster than one machine can walk the length of them and walk back.
| Travelling gantry | Drive-through | |
|---|---|---|
| What moves | The machine, along the vehicle | The vehicle, through the arch |
| Cycle is set by | How far the carriage has to travel | How fast vehicles can safely roll through |
| Trucks per hour | One vehicle per full carriage pass | ~30-40 through brush arches, up to ~60 through high-pressure arches |
| Space it wants | One bay, plus rail run-out | A straight approach, the arch, and a clear run-out |
| Civil work | Floor rails on a level slab | More length, and the approach graded for it |
| Handles an odd vehicle | Yes — park it and run a programme | Only if it fits the arch |
| Right when | Most depots, most of the time | Arrivals bunch and a queue is the real problem |
Where it belongs
Three yards where drive-through is the right answer.
If your yard is none of these, a gantry is very probably the cheaper machine and we will tell you so.
Everything comes back at once
A fleet that returns inside one hour does not have time for a machine that travels. The queue is the problem being solved, not the cleaning.
Washing is a condition of leaving
Where every vehicle has to be washed on the way out, the wash sits in the traffic flow and has to move at the speed of it.
Rigids and trailers, back to back
A straight through-route suits long combinations better than reversing them onto rails in a confined bay.
Questions we get
Before you choose drive-through
How many trucks an hour will it do?
That depends on the arch type, and the reason is safety rather than marketing. A brush arch has a moving brush against the vehicle, so it has to be taken slowly — roughly 30 to 40 trucks an hour. High-pressure arches touch nothing, so they can be driven through faster, up to about 60. Anyone quoting you one number for a drive-through without telling you which arches it assumes is quoting you half an answer.
How many arches do I need?
A 501 can be specified as one or two arches, or as a full line of them with brushes — and that axis buys wash CONTENT per pass rather than speed. More arches means more treatment happening while the vehicle is moving at the same pace, not a faster queue. Decide the throughput from the arch type and the arch count from how dirty the fleet comes back.
How much more space does it need than a gantry?
Length, mainly — a straight approach, the arch itself and a clear run-out, rather than one bay the machine travels within. Send us a site plan and we will mark up what the format needs before you commit to it.
Is it brush or touch-free?
The KKE 501 is a brush machine. If your fleet carries mirrors, ladders or roof equipment that rules brushes out, the touch-free answer in this range is the gantry-mounted 503 rather than a drive-through.
Can it wash buses as well as trucks?
Height and shape are the limits rather than vehicle type. Tell us the tallest and widest thing in the yard and we will size the arch to it.
Tell us about the yard
Send us your peak hour and a site plan.
How the arrivals bunch, and how much straight run you have. We will tell you honestly whether this is the format you need or whether a gantry does the job for less.