Milen family celebrates milestone

EAST COUNTY — The only business Tony Milen has ever known is that of washing cars.

His father, Jack Milen, opened his first car wash a few years before Tony was born.

Tony Milen remembers standing beside his father at work when he was just 3 years old.

He started washing cars for about $2 an hour when he was 13.

“My life has always been with the business,” Milen said. “My father absolutely built a legacy. Everyone loved my dad. He would help employees in the middle of the night. I’d like to think I’m that kind of man.”

Sixty years after his father opened the first family car wash, Milen, 58, continues the legacy. He co-owns Clear Sunset Car Wash, located off State Road 64 East, with his brother, Bruce, after coming out of retirement to purchase the facility in 2008.

Milen celebrated his lifelong career in car washing and his family’s milestone with a recent trip to Michigan to visit the six car wash locations Bruce Milen operates.

He also hosted a Kar Wash for Kids event July 16. Attendees received $1 car washes with proceeds benefiting the Foundation for Dreams’ Dream Oaks Camp, an East County-based camp for children with special needs.

Now that Milen owns his own car wash company, he realizes the scope of work his father performed on a daily basis without complaining, he said.

“As I get older, I think about my dad doing all the marketing and brand development on his own before my brothers and I were old enough to help him,” said Milen, who had worked his way up to vice president of his father’s company, Jax Kar Wash, by the time he was 28. “I’ve developed a real appreciation of what he had to do to build a business.”

Jack Milen started the first Jax Kar Wash in 1954.

Over the years, Tony and his brothers, Bruce and Michael, helped their father grow the business by adding more locations.

Tony Milen retired when he moved to Florida in 2005. But in 2008, he noticed Clear Sunset Car Wash was up for sale, just one year after it opened.

He purchased the wash, keeping the name because the car wash was already in running order and the decorations — beach-themed pictures, paint colors and signage — suited the area, he said.

But the location has the same feel as Jax, he said.

Milen said he brings the fast-paced mentality of a Midwesterner to East County’s more relaxed neighborhood, he said.

Most importantly, he hopes he’s making his father proud.

Family Affair
Tony Milen grew up watching his father, Jack Milen, wash cars. He and his brothers worked in the family business.

Tony Milen, who moved to the area in 2005 with his wife, Terri, hopes their sons, Jesse and Charlie, may consider a career in the family business one day, as well.

Tony Milen doesn’t force the idea on his children, but he hopes they understand their heritage.

Jesse Milen, 22, may already have the idea: he works at a car wash in Denver while considering college options.

Then and now
What has changed over the years?

“Mostly just the technology has changed. Before my time, back in the day, car washes used mitters — people who wore aprons from their necks to their ankles and dunked their hands in soapy buckets to wash cars. They wore huge mitts and did everything by hand. Today, we have a lot of hybrids. Then came the cloth machines and high-pressure washing techniques.

And the prices, I guess are different. I remember when it was $1 to wash a car.”

— Tony Milen, co-owner of Clear Sunset Car Wash

Contact Amanda Sebastiano at [email protected].