Car Wash Hires All-Autistic Staff To Wash Away Barriers: 10 Years Later, There’s Now 4 Florida Locations

Car Wash Hires All-Autistic Staff To Wash Away Barriers: 10 Years Later, There’s Now 4 Florida Locations

In 2015, GNN reported on the opening of Rising Tide Car Wash in Florida, where a man’s autistic son could acquire all the merits of hard work, earn a paycheck, and become more independent.

Now 10-years-later, founder John D’Eri’s original vision has been shared by thousands—both on the spectrum and off of it; both in the driver’s seat, and out of it.

Washing, buffing, and waxing at Margate, Parkland, and Coral Springs, with a fourth location set for Pompano Bay in 2026, Rising Tide now employs 90 neurodivergent adults.

When GNN first reported on the story they had just started, and managed 35 employees.

“I don’t want him to sit in a room, taken care of by others once I’m gone,” John D’Eri said at the time “I want him to have a job, I want him to have friends.”

He was imagining life after his son Andrew graduated high school; what would fill up his days? How would we be able to take care of himself?

Other fathers and mothers around Florida and the country bedsides will undoubtedly have had a similar questions, but if there’s one the last 10 years of operations has answered, it’s that a Rising Tide lifts all boats.

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“I like working on the cars because it’s so easy for me,” said Ryan Brodie, one of the employees who works with Andrew. “The best thing of having a job is that I make so much money.”

“There’s not many meaningful opportunities for individuals who have high-functioning autism, and this is something that they can do and be successful at and feel a part of,” said Michelle Hintz, a psychologist at Cadenza Center for Psychotherapy & the Arts in Hollywood, who regularly patronizes Rising Tide.

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Speaking with CBS, she said there’s a clear arc of success in cleaning a car, which arrives dirty, is covered in suds, and then gradually, through application, begins to sparkle and shine.

There’s a metaphor in there, maybe, but for now WATCH them in action below…