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Harborside Mobile Detailing- Finding The
Future In A Dreaded Childhood Chore






     Graham Greene once wrote, “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” That door opened for Marshall Cook while in
a teenage snit. “Out of eight children, I was the one whose chore it was to wash and detail the cars. They were big cars, too: a Cadillac and a Lincoln. Oh, how I hated that job,” he recalls. “So one day, I decided to give them a good waxing.”
    Perhaps it was just young Marshall being a little over-zealous? “No. I was being a smart aleck and I waxed everything on those cars whether it was conducive to waxing or not. I even waxed the door jambs!”
  Marshall’s Dad was not amused. “He whipped my butt,” Marshall laughs, “Oh boy did he beat my butt… after I cleaned up the mess, of course.”
      It is funny how one crosses over that cloudy threshold into enlightenment. “I started doing the neighbor’s cars, then friends of the family and friends of the neighbors. I got a
lot of compliments on what a fine job I did,” Marshall muses, “and I woke up one morning and realized I enjoyed it!” Marshall rode his bicycle to jobs all through high school. “Remember when bicycles had those baskets on the front? That was me, with my car cleaning tools and equipment.”
   Marshall graduated high school in 1980 and after a couple of shortterm jobs in a hospital, in a restaurant, and later in a grocery store, Marshall found himself working at a carwash doing detailing on the side. There he met a detailer from California who introduced him to techniques that were more professional. “I discovered a shampooer and buffer. What a great piece of equipment the buffer turned out to
be! It really cut down on the elbow grease. Of course, I made some mistakes along the way.”
     By 1986, Marshall was making a living, washing and detailing cars. He started his own business, Harborside Mobile Detailing in Safety Harbor, Florida. He covers much of Pasco County down to
Trinity and finds the bulk of his business in commercial business parks.
     If you have your doubts about
the car detailing industry being awarding in terms of notoriety, Marshall Cook is proof that this is a fallacy. Of course, Marshall himself is quite a character. His personality and positive attitude has afforded him some exciting opportunities. He washed and detailed the original Bat-Mobile, as well as the Herman Munster jalopy. “I’ve been everywhere,” he says. “Word of Mouth has taken me to Miami where I have had the pleasure of detailing $200,000, and $300,000 cars at the big car shows.”
He made his first trip to the Mobile Tech Expo this year where his mobile unit took Third Place in the mobile unit competition. “It is the biggest and best mobile detailing unit around,” he says. “I’m proud of winning, but of course I felt it should have won first place!” In 20 years, how much has the industry changed? Marshall feels the biggest advancement in

CHORE continued on page 17




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