Roadside hustle: Authorities dismantle illegal DIY carwash blocking busy road

Life in the city can be hard and struggling to make ends meet can lead people to come up with some rather creative ways to make money, some of which involve the illicit use of public utilities for private gain.

Take this DIY carwash blocking the sidewalk of the MICT Access Road, where cargo trucks driving in and out of the Port of Manila pass by daily. The Metro Manila Development Authority recently stumbled upon the bizarre (and, honestly, pretty ingenious) setup complete with a compressor, a working hose and water system, and even a coin-operated mechanism welded onto the wall. 

The kicker? This illicit carwash operation was located right under a No Parking sign — and even had its own CCTV camera installed, presumably (and ironically) to deter thieves.

“I sometimes wonder whether I’m being too hard on the barangay but then I see things like this, car wash, five pesos [for] three minutes,” says Gadget Addict, a content creator who posted a viral video about the car wash (and who mostly does videos about road safety and transportation issues in Manila, rather than gadgets).

“So they turned the public road into a car wash business. How does the barangay not see someone run electricity to the road?” he asks, panning to a sign that reads “Chichay Car Wash” just below a No Parking sign, just right beside the road.

MMDA authorities are on the scene in the video and can be seen questioning the supposed owner of the car wash, who doesn’t answer when asked if barangay officials knew he was operating the roadside obstruction.

“Aside from delaying the movement of containers, these kind of obstructions are causing congestion, which has made it easier for the thieves that target innocent trucks passing through the area,” Gadget Addict wrote in the video’s caption. “This road is vital to the economy but it’s being treated as parking for repair shops, car washes, canteens and other businesses that have been installed on the sidewalks.”

You can see more of the DIY roadside carwash here: