Laundry pre-treatment or pre-spotting compositions used to improve aqueous laundry processing

The invention relates to a laundry chemicals and specifically to a pre-spot or a pre-treatment composition that can be contacted with soiled location or a spotted deposit on a fabric item prior to a conventional laundry cleaning step. The aqueous liquid or solid treatment composition is formulated with a surfactant or a combination of organic surfactants that can prepare the soiled areas or spots for cleaning and promote the removal of stubborn hydrophobic greasy or oily soils, including associated organic particulate soils, such as finely divided elemental carbon, in the laundry/cleaning step. The properties of the surfactant or blended surfactant combination is selected to provide enhanced soil removal, preferably in institutional laundry applications. The ability of aqueous laundry compositions to remove organic hydrophobic soils, such as oily, greasy or particulate soils, from a laundry item is substantially improved by pre-spotting or pre-treating such a soiled item with a treatment composition having a surfactant comprising a unique hydrophillic ethoxylate surfactant with less than two moles of ethylene oxide or a or blend of at least two surfactant compositions with a blended HLB value of about 7-12. The blend of surfactants with this HLB value penetrates soils and renders the soil more easily removed from the item using aqueous laundry detergent. The treatment composition can be used in a liquid or solid form and can be applied to individual laundry items in the form of a solid stick or liquid spray prior to introduction to the laundry machine. Laundry items can also be contacted in the laundry machine with the pre-spot or pre-treatment composition in the form of an aqueous presoak, preflush, prewash, or other step prior to the cleaning step. A preferred laundry machine comprises an institutional tunnel washer.