Advance Auto Closing 100's of stores

[Uncle Gump]

Had to get a headlight bulb for the wife's Escape. Just figured i would go get a bulb in town opposed to ordering on the web.

Pulled into the lot and a big yellow liquidation sign on the front window.

Most things were 50% off...

Bought a stubby SAE/METRIC wrench for $8. SAE/METRIC ball end Allen wrenches fir $6. 3 jugs of Motorcraft synthetic blend 5W30 for pre pandemic pricing ($20). Their Dorman stuff and electrical connectors/wire was all 80% off... don't remember all I bought.

Counter guy said they're closing 700 locations.

 

[superj]

holy cow thats a lot of places shutting down.

they closed the one in my neighborhood back in 99 or 00

 

[rumblecloud]

There's one here in Capac, 9 miles from here. True franchisee store with local owners. AutoZ and Oreilly's is killing them. The other two are 23 miles from here. Competition is a biatch. I hate to see it though.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

I wonder how that will effect Carquest.

 

[scotts90ranger]

They bought out CarQuest a few years ago, they sold the rights to a guy that was supposed to maintain a warehouse in AK but now all of the rural Car Quest guys (in AK anyway) are screwed since that only lasted 6 months...

Advance didn't have many stores around me so I don't have much experience with them but yeah, I took advantage yesterday, gonna try to stop at another tonight for things I didn't think of before...

 

[Brain75]

I live an hour from oreilly and autozone, and 3 hours from everything else (including advanced).... I've had this on my wishlist for the last 4 months.. guess I have to eat and pay twice as much for em at napa:

Advance Auto Parts - Down for Maintenance

I have a SAE set already, and it is a trifle in cost, but 3 things I love about that
it is cheap
it has a little clamshell latch to keep em all together
it fits in the glovebox without a big case, wrapper, etc extra packaging - perfect tiny emergency set.
I wanted to get several of em to put one in every vehicle, mostly the new new vehicles which have nothing in em... my ranger, like my '48 I think is gonna have a regular toolbox full stashed somewhere in the truck.

 

[lowspeedpursuit]

Autozone is the cheapest, and open the latest.

The other expensive stores all have their place. Napa sucks, but sometimes has obscure stuff on the shelf. Federated actually knows what they're doing. My Carquest franchise is still run by the guys from before Advance took over.

Advance doesn't bring anything to the table in exchange for higher prices.

 

[Brain75]

interesting, and where I am (rockies), advanced is cheaper on just about everything.... napa brings better quality parts when you really should get better quality, but for dumb parts advanced would be my 1st go usually if I was closer.

 

[2 bronco 11s]

They shut the CarQuest stores down . My neighbor had to change to Federated .

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

They bought out CarQuest a few years ago, they sold the rights to a guy that was supposed to maintain a warehouse in AK but now all of the rural Car Quest guys (in AK anyway) are screwed since that only lasted 6 months...

Advance didn't have many stores around me so I don't have much experience with them but yeah, I took advantage yesterday, gonna try to stop at another tonight for things I didn't think of before...

After the merger if our Carquest couldn't get something they would always try looking on "the Advance side"

They shut the CarQuest stores down . My neighbor had to change to Federated .

Our Carquest still says "Carquest"

 

[Brain75]

Same here, all the little rural town (that are too small to support 2 stores without killing both of em), have either a Napa or a CarQuest one or the other.

No such thing as federated around here, in fact I never heard of em so had to look em up. apparently here it is FleetPride and there are very very few of those.

 

[Shran]

We still have CarQuest and it was frickin awesome back in the day but Advance ruined it when they came in. They carry the same parts as RockAuto but at 3x the cost. AutoZone is my go-to brick & mortar place.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

We still have CarQuest and it was frickin awesome back in the day but Advance ruined it when they came in. They carry the same parts as RockAuto but at 3x the cost. AutoZone is my go-to brick & mortar place.

Same here. Brass fitting and electrical part selection is nil.

 

[lowspeedpursuit]

I just checked some stuff I've bought lately, and Advance and Autozone are actually pretty comparable. Not sure if that's changed, or I was misremembering, or what.

It usually comes down to if I straight-up need something, I'll be lucky if one of the stores actually has it on the shelf anyway. If I don't need it immediately, I can't justify the insane premiums for any of them vs. online. I remember the last time I needed a micro relay urgently it was like $15+ for one. Online, $2 all day, and I'm sure they're all from the same Chinese factory.

The best is when the parts store offers to order something for me. Dude, if I'm gonna have to wait 3 days anyway, why would I pay 3x the money? I get that we're in this situation because of online shopping, but the difference is just too much.

 

[Bill]

I wonder how that will effect Carquest.

When Advance Auto opened here they closed the Carquest stores that were nearby. The Carquest that was near me was the last real auto store nearby. Now the closest real auto store is C&H Motor Parts in Placerville.