Machine Brand Talk Thread

[CKH]

I’ve been shopping around for my first laundromat, and started to see what appears to me to be trends related to brand quality and longevity. On the other hand, I’m really hearing and taking to heart what Jordan has said about how most top brands are basically equivalent and they all sell as good of a product as possible. But I’d like to hear people’s thoughts on the matter, and I could see this thread becoming a place people go to mine though the discussion when shopping for their own brands if we can get some experienced laundromat owners to sound off here. So please, let us know your favorite brands and why!

[CKH]

I’ll go first with my early shopping experiences: I’ve looked at a shop that has almost all Maytags and almost all of them are busted: even the newer ones! Mechanics have been unable to get the machines fixed or to keep them running for very long a repair. The store isn’t profitable and it looks to me that the choice of Maytags might have been the thing that sunk this store! I asked a distributor for another brand and he said that since Maytag does not manufacture its equipment, and since it often switches manufacturers, it’s hard to find parts and expertise. Nobody knows how to work on them. And that you never know what you’re actually getting when you buy a Maytag.

Then I went to look at a laundromat that has all Huebsch machines. All but four of them are well past their service life – some were bought in 2000! So I expected to walk in and find a bunch of busted machines but to my surprise, all but one machine was humming along nicely. Wow! Is this brand known for reliability and durability?

[Shawn Norcross]

Maybe you could locate a really good laundromat repair person in your area and pick his/her brain for brands that are more reliable than others. The repair people know what brands and ages of machines need more TLC than others.
That’s where I would start anyway.

[Jordan Berry]

Awesome advice Shawn!

[CKH]

I took this advice, actually! Last weekend I started to search for local laundromat mechanics. I had a much harder time finding any than I expected. So if anyone has search term tips for me, I’m open to that. And thanks for the suggestion.

My search led me to an article about a local laundromat owner who is a mechanic, (instead of a laundromat mechanic), and I called him right up just to see if he would chat with me. He did and we had a good conversation. He seemed pretty burned on the laundromat industry and told me it’s actually not a high profit margin industry. So I told him about this resource.

He was pretty open about some things and tight-lipped about others, but it was never what I expected. Like, he wouldn’t tell me why he said he didn’t trust a particular distributor, nor how many people are in his one-mile radius: both things I thought were pretty benign, but I guess not.

[Robert Anderson]

My repair guy loves Wascomat (washers, not dryers) and Speed Queen (both washers and dryers). This is the type of topic that was somewhat verboten on the other forum. Hopefully we can have some more frank talk about this subject here.

[Jason Dodge]

The thing is, many of the manufactures have great machines, but they may have a specific model that just sucked. And sometimes the next version of the model is better, sometimes its not. So its really hard to say this brand is better than that brand. Wascomat had a crossover that would blow bearings, Maytag had a early version of their current soft mount that was a MHN25 I think and that thing sucked. Out of balance issues and tons of problems. But both of these brands have improved those models since then. There a ton of examples like this. So it’s impossible for me to say this brand is better than that brand, cause I don’t know what model, year, version or size you are looking at.

[Emerson]

That is one of the major negatives often found in a small industry trade association.

That combined with the arguments and lectures over small issues along with all the in group / out group behavior and think.

[Ryan Foster]

CKH
In my area the following brands of washers and dryers are primarily what you see in mats

Alliance Washers and Dryers
They include
Huebsch and Speedqueen are both made in same factory up in WI.

Dexter washers and dryers

Continental washers and dryers

Quote all of them and go with the best mix of price and distributor aka dealer

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