Show your customers that you care by having a clean and tidy store.  Your customers use your laundry carts as much as (if not more) than your washers and dryers–and expect all of your equipment to be in top notch shape. This helps bring customers back and creates ongoing revenue!

Laundry carts need to be maintained too. Taking care of your laundry carts shows that you care. Taking the time to clean your carts and wipe them down routinely with a cleaning agent or damp cloth works nicely. This goes for the rack, basket, base and casters. Be sure to wipe the carts down immediately with a dry cloth to remove the moisture and debris–keeping your carts bright and dry. Your customers will notice this routine maintenance.

The worst part of this maintenance process is taking care of the casters – the only moving parts on a laundry cart. Let’s take it from the top:

Most raceways have ball bearings that are packed in grease as the lubricant allowing the casters to swivel. This minimizes noise and enhances function. Is the raceway sealed or open? Your customers depend on your carts and expect them to function properly. Poorly functioning carts can cost you customers! If you have an open raceway you’re more apt to have debris getting into the raceway and require more maintenance. If necessary you can open the raceway and clean the bearings and repack them with grease but an open raceway will ultimately yield to the same problem again and again.

Does your caster tend to attract lint, hair and debris around the center bolt and nut? This is a real bummer for you to clean and not a very attractive look for your Laundromat.  Remember your customers are putting clean clothes in these carts. Do you flip coins to see who gets the job or just postpone it for another day, week or more?

R&B introduced the “Clean Wheel System” over 5 years ago to minimize this problem and with great success–making this caster almost maintenance free. Our proprietary thread guard deflects the lint and debris from accumulating around the nut and bolt to begin with making life much easier and attractive for your store. Otherwise, the solutions vary from burning the debris (hmmmm) to removing the axle bolt and nut form the caster allowing access to remove the debris that has wound around the axle nut and bolt with a little muscle – not a fun job. Whose turn is it this time?

Once you have removed the nut and bolt you want to clean the inside of the caster as much as possible. Regardless, clean the nut and bolt and clean the center axle and caster as much as possible with a clean rag. Hopefully, you will find that there are bearings and they may need to be removed and cleaned unless the bearings are sealed–as with all R&B’s casters so they are virtually maintenance free. Now replace the nut and bolt and hope that you have a smooth rolling caster again.

So you see there is a lot more to the issue of laundry cart routine maintenance than may meet your first inclination. Save time, save money and make money by keeping happy satisfied customers coming back to your store with clean and functioning laundry carts.  Smooth rolling!