Family-owned business returns to its Wayne County roots
By Rochelle Moore
Published in News on July 19, 2017 5:50 AM
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News-Argus/ROCHELLE MOORE
Harry Walker III, Dan Walker, Lee Walker and Harry Walker Jr., founder, celebrate the opening of Walker Auto and Truck Parts store and warehouse in Goldsboro. The opening marks the 37th North Carolina location for the Raleigh-based company.
The largest NAPA distributor on the East Coast opened its 37th location in Goldsboro, a city with deep ties to the family-owned business.
Walker Auto and Truck Parts store and warehouse is centrally located near several major highways, including U.S. 70, at its 10,000-square-foot facility at 1212 N. William St.
The Walker family, including company founder, Harry Walker Jr., his sons, Dan and Harry Walker III, and grandson, Lee Walker, celebrated the grand opening last week with city, county, business and industry leaders.
"We're excited to be in Goldsboro, as my grandparents grew up here and my mother was, obviously, from Goldsboro," said Dan Walker, chief executive officer. "My dad is our founder, and we're excited that we've been able to keep the company going for these 56 years."
The Raleigh-based company has 37 locations, primarily in central and eastern North Carolina, spanning as far west as Asheboro and as far east as Otway, Walker said.
The Goldsboro location, four years in the making, was selected due to its accessibility for employees traveling to other eastern North Carolina stores, as well as its proximity to several major highways, including U.S. 70, the U.S. 70 Bypass, U.S. 117 and N.C. 111.
"We have stores in Selma, Snow Hill, New Bern, Morehead City, Beaufort, Otway, Cedar Point, so we were coming right through Goldsboro," Walker said. "It made sense to have a store here. It's located so well to service the whole area of Goldsboro and Wayne County."
The wholesale distribution company sells automotive and heavy duty truck parts primarily to professional repair shops, dealerships, body shops, municipalities, farms and utility companies. The store also offers equipment and vehicle parts for the agricultural and farming industry, and provides onsite hydraulics repair service.
Through its local store network, the company has an extensive 145-vehicle delivery system that provides timely service to local repair shops, according to company officials.
Walker Auto and Truck Parts sells more than 146,000 parts and products and employs more than 300 employees across the state, including seven working from the Goldsboro location, Walker said.
The store is being managed and operated by local staff, which have more than 90 years of combined experience in the parts and automotive industry, said Cary Ray, store manager. Don Jenkins is the assistant store manager, and Ricky Yelverton is the outside salesperson for the Wayne County area.
"We have a very experienced local crowd running this store," Walker said.
The store is open to the public, even though the largest bulk of business is through the wholesale distribution market.
"We're a wholesale distribution company selling to professional repair shops, fleets and municipalities," Walker said. "While our doors are open to the public, our key customer is actually the person who truly fixes the vehicle."
The building on William Street, owned by the Woodard family, is the former Hood Motor Co. Studebaker dealership, which was retrofitted for the auto parts business.
"It was the old art-deco building that needed to be retrofitted and updated, so we worked with the Woodards to do that," Walker said.
"It's been a real good effort between them and us to bring back an old eclectic 1940s Hood Motor Co. Studebaker and retrofit it to today's world."
The store's opening is also a tribute to the family's legacy in Wayne County. Dan Walker's grandfather, Harry Fitzhugh Lee, worked for Carolina Power and Light Co. for 45 years and helped bring electricity to eastern North Carolina. The Duke Energy H.F. Lee power plant is named after his grandfather.
Walker's grandmother, Julia Borden Lee, was the daughter of Frank Borden, a noted Goldsboro leader, who served on the city council, served as president of Wayne National Bank and started Borden Mills, Borden Manufacturing and Borden Brick and Tile companies.