Soul of 78- Shane “Boz” Blackwell

“Ten years ago, I jumped into this business and I had no earthly idea how to manage a car wash. Now, we just opened up our second Mr. B’s location here in Sumiton and it’s been a whirlwind. We bought all new equipment and got everything here swapped over. It’s finally done, and since we’ve been up and running we’ve been doing great business here.Jeremy Barrentine and I have been friends for a long time. He came to me over 10 years ago, and at the time I was working a job where I just wasn’t very happy. Jeremy asked me if I was interested in helping him run a car wash in Gardendale – and even though I had no clue what I was doing (and neither did he) I said yes. We learned together and have been able to keep everything up to the standard that we wanted. We’ve been lucky to have some really good employees.My favorite part is talking to people. I had attempted to work sales in years past and didn’t care for the pressure, but I truly enjoyed talking to people. So, I still get that here without the pressure. I may see 200 or 300 people a day and I may not be able to talk to all of them, but I see my regulars coming in and eventually they recognize me. You get to build relationships with people in this type of business. We’ve built relationships with the community in Gardendale and that’s what we hope to do here in the Sumiton community as well.”-Shane “Boz” Blackwell, Manager at Mr. B’sPhoto + Interview by Blakeney Cox