Advance Auto Parts to close hundreds of stores

[LAGrunthaner]

Saw this in the Split Bus forum today.

[TDCTDI]

Yes, over 700 stores.


In addition, they sold off WorldPac after completely fucking up their catalog (intermingling incorrect parts catalogs that cross referenced a whole slew of universal fit shit that ultimately cross referenced to other cars.) & selling off everything in inventory they could.



Link

_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[LAGrunthaner]

TDCTDI, OMG what a nightmare to get the wrong part from a big company like this. I usually only buy oil or other consumables when NAPA is closed. So sad.

[skills@eurocarsplus]

[NJ John]

My Advance is directly across the street from Auto Zone and only a few blocks from NAPA. I don’t know why I use Auto Zone more than Advance. But, I do. Both have bailed me out when I needed them. The Zone is on the closer side of the highway to me. So backstreet access is much easier. I don’t know if my local Advance is closing. There around 4 in a 10 mile range, probably more.
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1973 standard, yellow, lowered, 3” narrowed front, 1600 blo-thru turbo w/single dell 15.4@86, so far
11.41 et buggy. Long gone
Let’s go O’s! Let’s go O’s!
https://www.youtube.com/@AirSpooledGarage

[wcfvw69]

I never shopped at an Advance Auto parts store. Going to Napa, Autozone or O'Reilys showed me they all sell the same poor quality Chinese or third world made parts but in their brands boxes.
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[Glenn]

[raygreenwood]

[Abscate]

Perspective

700 stores closing out of near 6000 locations. I would classify that as resizing on a long term trend, not earth shattering news. Taylor Swift probably didn’t say anything that week, so that’s all the news outlets had.

How do you report a store closing list without perspective of scale and call your self a news outlet? I wish the sun would come up so I could see clouds to yell at.
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[jinx758]

Doesn't surprise me.
I was a Motive Power Technician (I diagnosed & repaired lift truck batteries & chargers - forklifts are only one type of lift truck).

Back in about 2013 ...

We serviced a World Pac in Alvin or Pearland routinely. This place was a complete joke : dilapidated building, trash everywhere, no one cared about maintaining anything, & the overstressed employees at the counter issuing more return authorizations than orders. It was my understanding at the time they were a drop ship warehouse for many companies (not sure, just a shop rumor).
Good or bad policies start at the top.

Forward to 2017 ...

Worked for an outfit that did some painting. A salesperson made a mistake & quoted $7,500 for an interior job - walls, trim, & doors. This was in a HUGE house in exclusive area with 18foot ceilings, 9inxh baseboards, plinth blocks, & crown molding. OOPS - missing a zero at best.
Owner was told 2week job. HAH - crew of 3to 4 taking 7weeks. Couldn't spray.
House owner was a parts buyer for the store beginning with O'

Didn't see salesperson ever again.

Anyhow -
The pencil pushers for auto parts & many others are only concerned with the almighty dollar. Plain & simple. It's easier to close locations that don't produce the volume they expect.
Quality - what's that ?
While cities invest in enormous tilt-wall 300K sqft distribution centers just to put up FOR LEASE banners.
Hey, look at us, we're growing !

What a joke !... !

I miss Luby's Restaurants ... stay safe

jinx
_________________
" It's not valuable unless you learn something from an experience. " Henry Ford

It's not unlike the same difference ...

My Craigslist rescued 100 footer :
1971 Standard Bug
1776cc dual port
034 distributor
38mm EGAS Carburetor

[wcfvw69]

[raygreenwood]

[veedubcrazy]

[skills@eurocarsplus]

[TDCTDI]

World Pac was a wholesale only operation that had regional warehouses. I have done close to $2,000,000 in sales with them. They bought parts from the original auto manufacturers, or the companies that supplied parts to those auto manufacturers, and their catalog listed & sold all of the parts by OEM part numbers. It was quite common to get parts with the OEM logos machined off.


Part of the problem was that over about 8-10 years, World Pac acquired Auto Parts International, then CarQuest bought World Pac, then Advance Auto bought CarQuest.

After acquiring these other entities, Advance Auto converted these other store fronts, so, I’m sure that a lot of these store closures were due to redundancy.



However, when CarQuest purchased World Pac, they decided to run them as separate entities. Advance auto on the other hand, immediately started combining the parts catalogs & tainting World Pacs’ catalog with errant part numbers that cross referenced aftermarket parts #s that sorta resembled OEM part #s. Then, their inept tech team further mutilated the catalogs by omitting huge swaths of their OEM catalog due some of the aftermarket parts not fitting.



Add to this that Advnce parts purchasers no longer sought out OEM suppliers in favor of all the cheapest Chinese shit, while raising the prices to enhance the bottom line. Where World Pac used to be the most competitive, I could regularly source the same part through Rock Auto or even the dealer at a much better price.


World Pac used to carry a good selection of wear & tear parts for vintage VWs, & Mercedes, and even Weber parts through their Redline division, but they have completely give up on most of that & are now supplying shitty, make it fit parts for cars in the 2000s. (If anyone has ever worked on a water cooled VW, they know that hose diameters change from one end to the other, on damn near every application.)
_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[Cusser]

I worked in R&D laboratory for a large US consumer products company for 4 decades, analytical chemistry. One year there was a shortage worldwide of acetonitrile, an extremely important organic solvent in high performance liquid chromatography. Acetonitrile is typically produced as a by-product of some plastic manufacturing in China, essentially single-source.

I did a usage spreadsheet and figured that we would have an 8-month supply (a couple of cases) with what we had on-hand. I also bought some acetonitrile that already had some acetic acid added because we could use that and just decrease the amount of acetic acid in our purified water to compensate and still meet cGMP pharmaceutical regulations.

My supervisor at that time insisted that we validate ALL our cGMP test methods using methanol instead, which would require complete method adjustment (as the chemistry was different) and complete cGMP validation, took months. Of course, by that time the shortage was over. At least I got paid for that.
_________________
1970 VW (owned since 1972) and 1971 VW Convertible (owned since 1976), second owner of each. The '71 now has the 1835 engine, swapped from the '70. Second owner of each. 1988 Mazda B2200 truck, 1998 Frontier, 2014 Yukon, 2004 Frontier King Cab. All manual transmission except for the Yukon. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335294 http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335297

[skills@eurocarsplus]

[Erik G]

I'm not sure how it is in your part of the world but one thing I didn't know until recently is Advance still has a lot of private owner stores. A lot are still branded as CarQuest but there are a lot of private ones with the Advanced Auto name. I used to like them because their parts seemed higher quality but the first time I had a warranty issue I stopped using them. I started using a local distributor, XL Parts

Unlike AutoZone, Orielley, and Napa, Advance compters are not on the same network. If you have a battery issue they cannot pull up your battery purchase. Nobody uses the date stickers anymore. You have to know which Advance you bought the battery at, AND they have to be able to call that store and verify. If it's across town not a big deal, but if you're crossing time zones you may have to wait a day like I did.

One near me is closing. Kinda surpsing, it's the busier of the 3. Might be good to try to pick up tools etc

[Cusser]

[modok]

I remember 10 ? 15 years ago, just a block away from teh machine shop, the Carquest store was literally across the street from the Advance auto parts.

And often if one didn't have the part in stock, you could just go across the street.
Then of course, advance bought them out.
I suppose that saved wear on the crosswalk, and they had a good inventory

Last few years, rarely did they have any wheel bearings in stock anymore.
So, bye, bye

I guess..... good thing, my new work location is a block away from an Orielley