Why Quick Lubes Are Eating the Dealerships' Lunch - September 22, 2026

Tyreese: Look. I saw something this week that made me stop scrolling.

J D Power put out their twenty twenty-six aftermarket service study. Express Oil Change took the top spot again, fourth year in a row. Take Five, Jiffy Lube, Valvoline, all up there. Fine. Congratulations.

But here's the thing that actually caught me.

Quick lube shops are growing. Dealerships are shrinking. And this isn't new. This has been happening for like eight years straight.

So I started digging. Because I've been doing this thirteen years. MOMS. Mobile oil changes. Driveways, office parking lots, fleet yards at six in the morning. We've done this a hundred times. And customers have been telling me the same thing for years. Now the data finally caught up.

Here's what the numbers say. An oil change at a quick lube runs about five to fifteen dollars cheaper than the dealership. And since twenty twenty-two, the average dealer transaction is up one hundred twenty dollars. That's the biggest jump of any service channel in the country.

You know what I mean? At some point people just do the math.

But, and this is where it gets interesting, it's not just the money. The researchers at Ducker Carlisle found something deeper. It's predictability.

You walk into a quick lube, you know exactly what's gonna happen. Oil change. Maybe a tire rotation. You're in and out. Nobody's coming back with a clipboard telling you about twelve urgent things they found.

Think about what just happened there.

The dealership model is: bring your car in, sit in our waiting room, drink our coffee, and get surprised by the bill. The quick lube model is: here's the price, here's the time, here's what we do. Boom. Done.

Now watch this. Because if you run a mobile oil change business, like I do, you are sitting in the most interesting seat in this entire industry right now.

The quick lube won by being fast and predictable. But they still make you drive to them. Still make you sit in their waiting room.

We take the trip away completely. The van comes to you. Your driveway. Your job. The fleet yard. That's the part people miss.

And here's what I don't know yet, and I'm gonna be honest about this. I don't know exactly how fast the big chains move into mobile. Valvoline just topped Entrepreneur's franchise list for twenty twenty-six. Two of the original Take Five franchisees just merged into this thing called FAST. Fifty-two stores. Biggest Take Five operator in the country. The big money is consolidating around fast, focused oil change service.

So let's figure it out together. What I do know is this. The chains are getting bigger and more standardized, which means the bar for speed and consistency keeps going up. If you're independent and mobile, you can't just be convenient anymore. Convenient is the entry ticket now. You have to be as consistent as Valvoline and as transparent as the best quick lube, from a van.

That's the job.

A couple more things on my radar. Strickland Brothers, the ten minute oil change guys, just opened three more shops in West Texas. They're past two hundred ninety locations now. Ten minutes. No appointment. Drive thru. Speed plus transparency plus consistency. That's the formula the whole market is rewarding.

And one watch item. Valvoline and Driven Brands both flagged a possible shortage of Group three base oil on their earnings calls. If supply tightens, the little guys without big purchasing contracts could get squeezed on allocation. I'm watching my supplier relationships close on that one. You should too.

So here's the bigger idea I keep coming back to.

For a hundred years, getting your oil changed meant going somewhere, waiting somewhere, and hoping the bill made sense. That distance, between you and the service, is disappearing. The winners aren't the ones with the nicest waiting room. They're the ones who remove every single step between "I need an oil change" and "it's done."

Thirteen years ago I started MOMS with a van and a simple idea. What if the oil change came to you? Turns out the whole industry is walking toward that idea. We just got here first.

I'm Tyreese. This is the Mobile Oil Change Industry. I'll see you tomorrow.