ADG Monthly Journal — September 2026: Closing the Route 66 Roadmap
In July, I wrote that Route 66 would be the next road ahead for Auto Detailing Guide. I named 29 cities across the historic route’s eight states as a practical starting line, and I was careful not to pretend that every one of those cities already had complete coverage.
Now that first Route 66 roadmap is complete—and ADG has kept moving.
ADG overall has grown from 59 public listings in the July journal to 614 live listings today. The final Route 66 closeout added 47 net-new public listings. One additional accepted research record matched a business that was already on ADG, so it was connected to the existing listing instead of creating a duplicate.
After that Route 66 closeout brought the directory to 514 listings, the next expansion added 100 more net-new listings across Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Those four states now have 10, 31, 20 and 39 live listings, respectively.
That is the kind of growth I want for this directory: more useful choices, but not at the expense of accuracy.
What “Completing Route 66” Actually Means
The original roadmap covered these 29 cities:
Illinois
Chicago · Pontiac · Springfield
Missouri
St. Louis · Springfield · Joplin
Kansas
Galena · Riverton · Baxter Springs
Oklahoma
Tulsa · Oklahoma City · Clinton · Elk City
Texas
Shamrock · McLean · Groom · Amarillo · Adrian
New Mexico
Tucumcari · Albuquerque · Gallup
Arizona
Seligman · Flagstaff · Kingman · Oatman
California
Needles · Barstow · Los Angeles · Santa Monica
Finishing that roadmap did not mean forcing every town to have the same number of businesses.
Some Route 66 markets have a deep local detailing supply. Others are tiny communities where there may be only a few businesses—or no independently verifiable local detailer at all.
The final research broke down this way:
- 8 cities reached ADG’s full first-pass direct-coverage target.
- 6 cities reached a smaller but useful level of direct coverage, supported by truthful nearby or service-area options where the evidence allowed it.
- 15 rural Route 66 communities were researched to exhaustion even though the verifiable local supply remained below that level.
That last group matters.
A directory becomes less useful when it fills empty space with guesses. If a small Route 66 town has one verified local detailer, ADG should say one. If the useful next choice is in a nearby town or is a business that explicitly serves the area, it should be labeled that way. Nearby does not become local just because it makes the page look fuller.
The Live Directory Is Bigger—Without Counting the Same Business Twice
Before the final Route 66 publication pass, ADG had 467 live listings.
The accepted Route 66 research supplied 48 business identities for publication review. During product-side reconciliation, one of those—Birds Detail in the Los Angeles/Santa Monica area—matched an existing ADG business by its official domain. That record was reconciled to the existing listing instead of being published twice.
The other 47 accepted identities were net-new, bringing the live directory to 514 listings.
The next publication cycle supplied 100 accepted identities from Mountain Home, Arkansas and undercovered markets in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Product reconciliation found all 100 to be distinct net-new identities, bringing the live directory from 514 to 614 listings.
The expansion added 10 Arkansas listings, 31 Louisiana listings, 20 Mississippi listings and 39 Alabama listings. Those states had no live ADG listings at the start of this expansion.
The important part is not just that the number got bigger. The publication system also kept the distinctions that matter: direct location, nearby or service-area coverage, unknown information, duplicate identity and unresolved conflicts are treated differently instead of being flattened into one big list.
Small Towns Were the Hardest Part
The rural portions of Route 66 were the most useful test of the ADG research standard.
In a major city, finding a dozen legitimate detailing businesses may be straightforward. In a historic road town with a small population, the honest answer may be two businesses, one business, or none that can be verified well enough to publish.
That forced a better rule for the guide:
Research completion is not the same thing as pretending a market is full.
For the smallest towns, ADG preserves the real direct count and uses nearby or service-area alternatives only when there is evidence for them. When a useful fallback cannot be supported, I would rather leave the limitation visible than manufacture a recommendation.
That makes the directory less impressive on paper in a few places, but more useful in the real world.
What I Learned From the First Route 66 Roadmap
The biggest lesson is that building a national directory is not mainly a page-count problem.
It is an identity problem, a geography problem and an evidence problem.
A useful listing needs to answer basic questions reliably: Is this the right business? Is it actually connected to the place being searched? Is there a real way for someone to contact it? Are we describing something the source actually supports?
The Route 66 work also reinforced a rule that will continue as ADG expands: unknown stays unknown. A missing field does not automatically mean “no,” and a business that serves a city is not automatically located there.
The latest expansion reinforced another rule: a shared booking or social platform is not itself a business identity. Two businesses using the same platform do not become the same business just because their URLs share a host.
Those rules add discipline to the publication process, but they make the whole directory easier to trust and easier to maintain.
What Comes Next
The Route 66 roadmap was never meant to be the end of ADG’s expansion. It was the first connected national corridor and a way to prove a repeatable research-to-publication system across very different markets.
That system has now moved beyond the Route 66 states. Mountain Home is live, and Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama all have real directory coverage where there was none before.
ADG will keep expanding in bounded passes chosen for customer usefulness instead of trying to make the map look full overnight.
I am also continuing to work on the business side of the guide. More listings and better coverage are useful, but they are not the same thing as traffic, leads, customers, advertisers or revenue. I will keep those measurements separate as ADG develops.
The July journal said there was plenty of road ahead.
There still is. But the first Route 66 stretch is no longer just a roadmap—it is part of a live directory that now contains 614 businesses.
Jon
ADG Founder and Designer