Monday, May 16, 2016



National Water Safety Month 


Spring is upon us and soon summer’s heat will draw kids of all ages to the water for many fun and refreshing ways to celebrate the season! Whether boating, swimming, or flying down a Slip N’ Slide, we should all keep in mind the ways to stay safe in and around water. May is National Water Safety Month and a perfect time for all of us to learn and review ways we can be safe in and around water.

As part of our Community Engagement programs, we support ongoing education about water safety including “Pool and Water Safety” coloring books we distribute at events and acting as a sponsor for Siskey YMCA and their 50K for 50K program. Not only does the Y offer swim lessons for all ages and swim assessments, but their dedication to water safety continues through efforts like 50K for 50K, a program started by Siskey YMCA Executive Director, Rich Gallagher. He dedicated himself to run 50K, a 31-mile race, in October 2015 to help raise $50K for 500 children to receive swim lessons and water safety education! We are proud to support a program that works to educate about the danger of drowning and to provide free and discounted swim lessons; both ensuring a decrease in drowning deaths among children.


For more information on why this effort is so important and how you can contribute to help a child by providing swim lessons, visit http://bit.ly/1rt3sov

In addition, the Y offers other water safety resources: http://bit.ly/1TuFSP3 & http://bit.ly/1QT0w9D

You can find a sample image of our coloring book here:




There are also many additional resources for parents online, including the very helpful tips from the American Red Cross below. Please take time to review these tips with your children and explain why water safety is so important. Not only will following these tips ease your mind, but they can also be a great way for kids to learn responsibility and make swimming and other water activities even more fun!

Make Water Safety Your Priority

  • Swim in designated areas supervised by lifeguards.
  • Always swim with a buddy; do not allow anyone to swim alone. Even at a public pool or a lifeguarded beach, use the buddy system!
  • Ensure that everyone in the family learns to swim well. Enroll in age-appropriate Red Cross water orientation and Learn-to-Swim courses.
  • Never leave a young child unattended near water and do not trust a child’s life to another child; teach children to always ask permission to go near water.
  • Have young children or inexperienced swimmers wear U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jackets around water, but do not rely on life jackets alone.
  • Establish rules for your family and enforce them without fail. For example, set limits based on each person’s ability, do not let anyone play around drains and suction fittings, and do not allow swimmers to hyperventilate before swimming under water or have breath-holding contests.
  • Even if you do not plan on swimming, be cautious around natural bodies of waterincluding ocean shoreline, rivers and lakes. Cold temperatures, currents and underwater hazards can make a fall into these bodies of water dangerous.
  • If you go boating, wear a life jacket! Most boating fatalities occur from drowning.
  • Avoid alcohol use. Alcohol impairs judgment, balance and coordination; affects swimming and diving skills; and reduces the body’s ability to stay warm.

Prevent Unsupervised Access to the Water

  • Install and use barriers around your home pool or hot tub. Safety covers and pool alarms should be added as additional layers of protection.
  • Ensure that pool barriers enclose the entire pool area, are at least 4-feet high with gates that are self-closing, self-latching and open outward, and away from the pool. The latch should be high enough to be out of a small child’s reach.
  • If you have an above-ground or inflatable pool, remove access ladders and secure the safety cover whenever the pool is not in use.
  • Remove any structures that provide access to the pool, such as outdoor furniture, climbable trees, decorative walls and playground equipment.
  • Keep toys that are not in use away from the pool and out of sight. Toys can attract young children to the pool.

Maintain Constant Supervision

  • Actively supervise kids whenever around the water—even if lifeguards are present. Do not just drop your kids off at the public pool or leave them at the beach—designate a responsible adult to supervise.
  • Always stay within arm’s reach of young children and avoid distractions when supervising children around water.
  • Know What to Do in an Emergency. If a child is missing, check the water first. Seconds count in preventing death or disability.
  • Know how and when to call 9-1-1 or the local emergency number.
  • If you own a home pool or hot tub, have appropriate equipment, such as reaching or throwing equipment, a cell phone, life jackets and a first aid kit.
  • Enroll in Red Cross home pool safety, water safety, first aid and CPR/AED courses to learn how to prevent and respond to emergencies.

Friday, April 22, 2016

What Earth Day means to us.


Here at Sam’s Xpress®, we LOVE Earth Day! Why? Because Earth Day is a great reminder of how important it is for everyone to commit to environmental conservation, one of our biggest priorities. Earth Day is celebrated annually on April 22nd, and related events are held in over 193 countries worldwide! Earth Day Network helps to coordinate these events globally.

We attended an event to celebrate Earth Day nearby our University location at UNCC on Wednesday April 20th. Tons of students and faculty visited us at the Earth Day Festival for some free giveaways and a chance to win some free car washes! We have also been sharing easy conservation ideas on our social media pages leading up to and will continue during Earth Day, today. Make sure to follow us to keep up with our helpful tips plus all of our exciting contests and giveaways!

We were also able to celebrate Earth Day in a big way with one of our fellow Earth Day Festival attendees, Sustain Charlotte, by attending their 2016 Sustain Charlotte Awards last night! We were honored to attend as one of four nominees for their Water category award and thrilled to share our sustainability story with nominees and attendees of this great event. Congratulations to the Catawba River Keepers on winning this award and their continued commitment to water conservation! You can find more info about Sustain Charlotte, award nominations, and the event here: http://www.sustaincharlotte.org/2016nominees

To get everyone else as excited about Earth Day & conservation as we are, we are sharing some of our favorite (and simple!) ways to go green on Earth Day and every day! These tips from goodhousekeeping.com are sure to come in handy for you, both as a way to easily help our environment and save money while doing it! 

In the Morning

Green "to go." Not brewing at home? Take a travel cup to your favorite coffee shop; they may fill it at a discount.


At Work

Double up. Configure your office printer or copy machine so it prints on both sides of the page.
Put it to sleep. If you'll be away from your computer for more than 20 minutes, change it to "sleep" mode.


Running Errands

BYOB. Bags, that is. It's good for your wallet, too: Some retailers, such as CVS, now pay you for every disposable bag you don't take ($1 on a special CVS card for every four trips on which you BYO) (Target gives a 5 cent discount per bag!).


Before Bed

Truly turn off electronics. Plug your devices — the TV and DVD player, or the computer and printer — into a UL-certified power strip; switch the whole group off for the evening to prevent phantom electrical draw.
Don't tap out. Turn off the water while brushing teeth. Leaving the tap running during the recommended two minutes of brushing can waste up to five gallons of water a day.

Of course, we recommend visiting a Sam’s Xpress location (you can see all of our locations here: http://samsxpresscarwash.com/locations/) each and every time you wash your car! We not only save you time, effort, and funds spent on water bills, but also potentially hundreds of gallons of water, compared to washing at home. Sam’s Xpress Car Wash is continually making improvements to better the environment and your car washing experience. Our top-notch equipment allows us to recycle 100% of the water used and reuse 90% of what is recycled. Each car wash site saves about 12 million gallons of fresh water per year. All of our chemicals are environmentally friendly and biodegradable, making the entire car wash experience eco-friendly. From saving energy through the works of the car wash to our energy saving dryers in the bathroom facilities, Sam’s Xpress® is determined to keep our environment safe and clean!

We hope you will help us celebrate Earth Day this year by visiting us for an environmentally friendly car wash and choosing a new way you can help the environment.

Friday, April 1, 2016

Adopt-A-Stream - Just One of the Ways Sam's Xpress® Conserves Water!

You may know that Sam’s Xpress® is dedicated to water conservation and participates in the Water Savers Program at all of our car wash locations, but did you know that we dedicate ourselves to helping with other local water saving efforts, too? One of the ways which we have chosen to help locally is by volunteering with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Adopt-A-Stream program. We have been volunteering our time and resources to help keep Four-9 stream in Matthews, North Carolina, a safe and clean place for animals, people, and the environment for the past three years!

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Adopt-A-Stream program is a great way for any group to give back and become active in the community. Scheduling a clean-up is easy and participating in this program helps keep the over 2,000 miles of streams in Mecklenburg County clean and beautiful. Who doesn’t love a clean community? By having volunteer groups, like our employees, in and around the streams, the county can also more easily stay abreast of water pollution and other problems affecting water quality and the overall environment.
This opportunity, which is just one of the programs provided by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services, even provides volunteers with hip waders, litter grabbers, gloves, and trash bags! Supplies for up to ten volunteers are available to those groups who schedule ahead of time and request these items.

Participation in this program allows us to further commit to two of our biggest priorities: conserving water and giving back to our local communities, by helping to rid local streams of litter and debris. Employees from our various locations and our corporate staff (including our own COO!) volunteer their time twice a year to help keep our community waterways clean. We love the chance to get together as a team to provide a service for the community and spend some time together outside of the offices and car wash sites. Small groups of around 8 Sam’s Xpress employees suit up in the hip waders provided by the Adopt-A-Stream Program and commit to cleaning sections of our designated stream. Through our efforts, we are typically able to remove several garbage bags full of refuse and/or large items found in and around the stream. Through the commitment of groups like us, around 130 stream clean ups removing more than 9 tons of garbage, were completed in Mecklenburg County over the past year! This means preservation of one our most precious natural resources and good feelings all around! We will be continuing our efforts as we grow into new markets, such as our expansion to the Raleigh, NC area later this year. You can find more information here: www.samsxpresscarwash.com/news

Reference:

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Press Release - Sam's Xpress Car Wash expands!

Sam’s Xpress Car Wash Announces Expansion into Raleigh, North Carolina Market

One of the fastest growing car wash companies is expanding its brand!


Charlotte, March 9, 2016:  Sam’s Xpress Car Wash, LLC (“Sam’s Xpress”), a Charlotte, North Carolina based company, today announced its plan to build twenty car washes in Raleigh, North Carolina, and its surrounding markets.  Sam’s Xpress currently has eight properties under contract in this market; with several already in the permitting phase. Sam’s Xpress is projected to open six car washes in the Raleigh market by year end, and 14 more in 2017.

Sam’s Xpress opened its first car wash site in December 2012, and now has 11 car washes in the Charlotte, North Carolina market.  Now, with a wealth of experience from building and operating these sites, Sam’s Xpress is ready to grow the brand at a faster pace.  In the past three years Sam’s Xpress has created hundreds of new jobs and has been voted best car wash by the Fort Mill Times in each of the past three years.

Sam’s Xpress improves neighborhoods by providing clean, professional, and environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional car washes. By employing state of the art equipment, each car wash site saves an estimated 12 million gallons of fresh water per year and all chemicals are environmentally friendly.  Sam’s Xpress also lends a helping hand to local organizations within the community. The company has helped support over 50 non-profit organizations throughout the Carolinas.  



7935 Council Place, STE 200
Matthews, NC 28105