William Schokkenbroek (52) and Berry Oosterrood (43) are both at a point in their lives and careers where they no longer want to be too annoyed in their working lives. They found their calling in the car wash.
Total Car Perfection started as a simple car wash, but after five years it is screeching out of control. They even clean the helicopter that Max Verstappen flies with. The men have a passion for cars. Spotless cars.
Berry used to be a location director at an undisclosed dairy giant. He sighs deeply. “One hundred and forty men. Seventy at work, seventy present… One month all the balls had to be on farmer’s cheese, the next month on yoghurt. They had no idea what they were doing.”
He was faint about it. More than five years ago, a rickety car wash on the Kapitein Nemostraat in Emmen caught his eye. That seemed like a relief. Washing cars all day long. Without thinking. No stress, delicious. And I saw potential in this place, among the car dealers.”
Brilliant news
And so Total Car Perfection Emmen was born. It didn’t stop with pre-washing cars and pulling them through the car wash. “I got someone who loved vacuuming cars.” One thing led to another and now there is a steaming tent where they restore the bodywork and the interior to shiny new condition.
At one point Berry Oosterrood bumped into William Schokkenbroek at the freezer compartment in Lidl. They knew each other vaguely from the Emmen car cleaning circuit. It clicked: Oosterrood is the business brain, Schokkenbroek is the cleaning champion. “We have forty years of experience”, Schokkenbroek summarizes the collaboration.
Things went quickly since the meeting at Lidl: the building was thoroughly overhauled and now there is a car wash where staff pre-wash the car extensively, there is a VIP department where the interior is cleaned down to every hard-to-reach corner and there is a cleaning department where cars are made showroom-ready. Dealers from all over Drenthe bring their cars.
Helicopter from Max
They do special jobs: under a sheet there is a Mazda RX-7 Convertible from 1988. One of the gems from the find in a barn full of old-timers in Dordrecht. “We are making it perfect.” Ahead is a camper whose refrigerator caught fire. The sooty interior is now spic and span again.
Schokkenbroek will soon be leaving for Den Helder to polish a few Heli Holland helicopters. “They transport a lot of personnel for oil rigs there, but also Max Verstappen, the king and the Feyenoord team.”
Around twenty people are now present and working at Total Car Perfection every day, including guys who don’t easily find work elsewhere. “We have a boy with autism who never finished a sentence,” says Berry. “We put it on the car wash and now it talks to customers.” Another boy can brush like the best, but too much fuss quickly becomes too much for him. “We have set up a separate corner for him.”
Don’t talk, just brush
All men have one thing in common, says Schokkenbroek. “They are crazy about cars.” In the cleaning department there is a large poster with the inspiring company motto: ‘Don’t talk but brush’. They can clean here, but they also talk: ,,We don’t have to keep up with our professional literature, because they know everything about new products before they are on the market, so to speak. In the canteen it is only about cars.”
Meanwhile, the brain of the men is not standing still. Schokkenbroek: ,,We saw that customers had a very pleasant time at the car wash when they were waiting. So now we have a sandwich shop, The Pitlane, where customers can go for coffee and sandwiches.”
The next project? “Plan enough. We have another whole hall behind this.”