Saw a recent article in Forbes magazine about retail store closings that MAY happen in various retail segments. Among the companies having a lot of financial trouble is Pep Boys. The article stated that the company is in a free-fall... I would think that, right now, most auto parts chains are having second thoughts about new stores and/or new markets to tackle. Here in Wisconsin O'Reilly has come into the marketplace recently but we don't have any Pep Boys. The three stores that I do biz with in my little town, NAPA, Automotive Supply and CarQuest are doing OK. I'm sure there will be some kind of a shakeout...
Hm.... well the three here in Bako seem to have as much traffic as the other parts houses we have. I prefer to go to Carquest for knowledgeable clerks and autozone for a good laugh. Pepboys has always been good to me but they are a further drive. I go to them when the others fail.-Weeks
The Craftsman line of hand, power, and garden tools and the goodwill in the name is the only asset Sears really has. Other than their real estate, which has been over mortgaged. The Craftsman name is going to survive. Where they will be sold is another thing. O'Rileys? Our local Sears and KMart stores are tired, shabby looking places. The Sears store is the only open business in an otherwise closed mall. Don't see many cars around them. Hard to find parking at the WalMart down the street. What a mess.
Hooray for China!!! We could all move there. Then we'd be gainfully employed by Wal-Mart, Nike, Converse, Husky tools, etc, etc, etc..... Are the big corporations really shocked and surprised by the fact that Americans don't have money to spend on their goods? Could it be (say it isn't so) that too many Americans are unemployed, who used to have good factory jobs here in the USA? Corporate greed and focus strictly on the bottom line per unit has come back to bite their asses. Sad. Very sad. So much of the America I knew growing up is gone forever, with more Americana to follow it down the Chinese crapper.
All the PepBoys I've been to in the last 5-10 years have been a joke. Couldn't get a wheel bearing for a 9 inch ford. But if you want a day-glo neon tenzen shimatsu shift knob sticker kit you're all good.
Yeah, but nobody sells more cheap chinese made tires than pep-boys... And you can get them installed in 10 hours or less!
Darn, if I had known Pep Boys had cheap Chinese tires I wouldn't have purchased my Brazilian tires at Discount Tires where they mount them in just 30 minutes or so.
Jesus works in our Pep Boys in Whittier , he is excellent , the only one in 15 yrs I get the right parts from ("Jesus works in Pep Boys ",sounds like a song title )
I use only use Pepboys as an "accessory" store for my latemodels....they have a lot nice exhaust tips, etc.....
There was a Pep Boys near my house in Cincinnati. They were worse than no store at all because I went in in the HOPE they had something, and wasted 20 minutes several times before I just gave up on them. Now like dreddybear said if its Ricer crap you want...well.... Shame about Sears. I too like Craftsman tools. It would be a VERY smart move for O'Reiley to pick them up. (Mental note: get them bad tools replaced this weekend!)
I am a commercial and retail paint contractor by trade. And over the past 7 years I have probably painted 25 Oreilly's, 20 Advance Autos, and probably 15 Auto Zones. The trend that we are seeing right now with the economic slow down that a lot of these auto parts dealers are doing one or two things. 1. with the interest rates as low as they are the are going in and building more locations and then literally sitting on them waiting on the economy to pick back up which they know it will. 2. Just the opposite, they are shutting down stores during this slow period and concentrating on keeping the doors open on their high volume locations. Which either way you look at it, it works out for me because tipically the would do a remodel when the open the later back up for buisness. Please mind you this is pretty typical of a about 80% of all your retail franchises.
PACK OF azz klowns, I needed a timing cover gasket for a sbc in a pinch, guy asks what transmission i have, 20 more questions and tells me its special order! "advance,murray,checker-sh-kr,parts america", SAME company! get screwed here or across the street, dont matter!
in my small town , we have Napa , Carquest and an Autozone....all seam to be doing fine when i go in them , but of course they don't show me the books O'Reily's built a building a couple months ago , but nothing ever seams to be going on there when i drive by...maybe they are having second thoughts
Agreed. I'm sick of reading about layoffs and downsizing. Hmm... maybe we should employ Americans in American factories to make American goods so that Americans would have money to spend in America. Did I get my point across? I'm begining to think that getting things going at the grass roots level would be better than waiting for corporate America to take care of us.
Doesn't matter which supply house you use here---none of the staff have a clue what you're talking about. Bob
Pep Boys here host a big car show in the spring. I bought a 1 ton chain hoist for 10 bucks there last year. It's too far for me to go, across town. CarQuest is just too damned expensive. My store, for the most part, is NAPA. They seem to have most stuff and the guys sort of know how to find stuff. AutoZone & Advance is OK if you know what you want or find it online before you go and take them the number. Don't have an O'Rileys here ..
Is it time? With an auto industry headed for the junkyard and at a time when the economic car wreck is leaving rivals like Pep Boys (NYSE: PBY) up on blocks, a number of investors view auto parts retailer AutoZone as potentially being on its deathbed.
Where the hell have you been ? They been selling them since sears bought em ? Our sears in Jackson seems to be doing ok yet and I buy all craftsman tools and sears washers dryers and stuff like that also. Why.. they have good stuff it seems to last for years.... I hope they dont go under but i see a trend here thats been on going.. We have like 3 auto zones and 3 advance auto stores and a mom and pop thats still kicking but i think they are down to 1 location now.. I rarely go into auto zone and id rather use advance and i seldom get into the mom and pop store but i iknow i should.. Oh ya we also have a napa but ive only been in there once.. Dave
I feel bad about Sears, they were a good company to work for, I was there for 6 years ( 95-01 ) selling tires, by the time I quit I had 5 weeks of vacation a year and they had started a pension plan for me. Pep boys on the other hand is a total joke these days, stores full of cheap junk.
Maybe its time that buyers will start to get deals they should. Been ripped off too many times during the 'boom' Bob
I need a SBC oil pump to make a drill pump. I'v made a bunch of them. Mellings part number M-55 @ autozone. So I usually just go in and ask for an oil pump for a... whatever... 72 camaro with a 350. And I have to go thru the whole schpeil with the un-educated computer jockey... "2 barrel or 4 barrel? Automatic or manual? With or without A/C???" WTF? I know the part number, so the last time I needed one, I went in and just asked for a "M-55 oil pump"............... Computer jockey gives me a blank stare, then he enters "M-55" into the computer, and says "the computer says we dont have any"... Sure you do, I looked online before I came in, you have 5 of them in stock, just go back there where the oil pumps are and get me an M-55... So he calls his manager over and asks where they keep the oil pumps! Manager asks why the computer didn't tell him where it was, and he tells the manager that I just had a part number. Manager says [to me] "It dont work that way, we need to run it thru the computer to track inventory. Ok, ok, ok... 72 Camaro with a 350. Here come the questions... 2V or 4V? Auto or manual?, etc, etc... He finally gets my pump, and then he asks for my phone number for the warranty... I dont need a warranty cuz I'm gonna cut it up and make a drill pump out of it... Ok, here's your oil pump. Get to the cash register, a different guy scans the bar code, and the computer goes "BEEEEP"!!! He looks at the computer and says "I cant ring it up because there's no warranty on it". Here comes the manager, and he explains to me that they need to put my warranty info in to the "system". I [again] explain that I dont need a warranty cuz I'm gonna cut it into pieces... Manager says "I cant sell it untill I put the warranty info into the system, so I need your phone number". That's when I lost it... Told the manager "I'm a customer, I'm not a number, and I'm not a statistic in your computer", and I turned around and walked out. Havn't been back to the 'Zone since
The pep boys here is full of Chinese dirt bikes and four wheelers. They have the shittiest parts help. I don't even go there...
i am wit you .. bunch of idiots and they have no idea... all of those are the same and and i dont go to any of them !!! pep boys is a joke and hell they should go under with the crap they sell ..last time i went was a few years back for lug nuts...LUGNUTS!!! stock ass little lug nuts... well they got em if you got 20's but not 1/2 inch .. thats broke the camels back never again ... I then found local ma and pa speed shops and parts houses.. real guys knowing their shit and a better price to boot...
oh and i love it when they are going threw their computers at checkers... and what year car do you have .... 1926 dodge ummmm totally lost them i love it !! or 50 ford lost again when all i might want is a spark plug set for my 368 or small block ..and I have the part # in front of them
Man, that's the way it works. I bought a 302 from an early 80's Mustang with a carb to put into my '55 Ford. Any time I needed anything from it, it was the same routine. "What year and model?" "Try 1983 Mustang" "LX or GT" "I don't know" "What do you mean you don't know?" "It's now in a '55 Customline" "A What?" "Never mind" "Manual or automatic?" "I don't know" "You don't know whether your car is automatic or not?" "My car has a C4, but I don't know what the donor car had" "Is a C4 an automatic?" "Yes, dear." "Two barrel or 4?" "Fuck if I know, Sparky!" "I have to know which" "Ok...4 barrel" "A/C?" "Sure, why not?" "What color was the headliner?" "Puce" "What wheel covers?" "Where's the nearest NAPA?" Pep Boys is the same. I think that all auto parts chains started to go to shit when they bought computers and hired guys from the high school AV club to work the counter. No wonder they're going tits up.
The store here in Boardman, Ohio seems to be doing well. It's right next to where my wife works so it's very handy for her. The people there, for the most part, are nice and always willing to squeeze her in for oil changes and other small stuff. Although they did quote me a ridiculously high price for new disks and pads for my Malibu Maxx. $800.00! Them is some fancy Chinese disks! I had the work done for less than half of that at a neighborhood shop.
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