Auto Repair & Dealership Drainage

Applications · Commercial & Municipal

Service bays, wash bays, and dealership lots move water, oil film, and wheeled loads across the same slab every day. The drainage answer is a trench drain run per bay, rated for the vehicles on your lifts — and routed the way your plumbing code requires.

What the slab is up against

A service floor collects everything a vehicle brings in: snow melt and rainwater off the body, wash-down water, coolant and oil drips, and grit. Without a drain run, that mix migrates across the bay, puddles under the lift, and walks into the customer corridor on technicians' boots. Wash bays are worse — high water volume, detergents, and constant wet-dry cycling that destroys unprotected slab joints.

The traffic is the other half of the problem. Bays see cars and light trucks daily, plus the occasional box truck or dually pickup, and the tight turning near a drain run puts shear on the grates. Grates that loosen become a jack-and-jack-stand hazard; grates that are under-rated crack. And because most service water is oily, the run's discharge usually cannot go straight to storm — plan on routing interior and wash-bay drains to an oil/water separator or interceptor as your local plumbing code directs.

Load class guidance

Interior bays and dealership drive lanes are typically Class B to C territory — cars and light trucks daily, heavier vehicles occasionally. Specify Class C where box trucks, parts deliveries, or vehicle transporters can reach the run, and step higher on the transporter unloading lane itself. Remember that floor jacks and lift arms concentrate weight on small contact patches, so a grate that only ever sees tires on the lot may still need a higher rating inside the bay. The full A–F breakdown, with H-20 equivalents, is in our Load Class Recommendation Guide.

Recommended systems

In-stock · Bays & wash bays

NDS Dura-Slope trench drain

NDS Dura-Slope is the workhorse for service and wash bays: pre-sloped channel sections that pull water to the outlet even on a flat slab, with grate options including ductile iron for vehicle traffic. It ships from stock, so a bay build-out or retrofit is not waiting on a factory lead time.

Quote-only · Aprons & drive lanes

ACO KlassikDrain

For exterior aprons, service entries, and dealership drive lanes, ACO KlassikDrain pairs polymer concrete channels with a wide grate catalog — ductile iron where vehicles cross, ADA-marked patterns where customers walk. Quote-only; send us run lengths and we price the system as a package.

Quote-only · Transporter & delivery lanes

ACO PowerDrain

Where car carriers, parts trucks, and service vehicles concentrate — the transporter unloading lane, the fuel point, the truck gate — step up to ACO PowerDrain with boltless PowerLok ductile iron grates that cannot walk loose under braking and turning loads.

In-stock · Lot & landscape

Catch basins for the lot

Display lots and perimeter landscaping drain best to point inlets: catch basins at the low spots, piped to your storm system, keep inventory rows and customer walkways out of standing water.

Stainless steel and heel-proof grate packages from Josam are available on request for wash-down and customer-facing areas — ask when you request a quote.