I forgot to mention, here locally, it is Locally Owned having the NAPA franchise. It is NOT a corporate owned store.

Our local Napa is franchise. The owner is about the best gentleman you could ask for and I went to school with most of the employees fathers. I have never had any problems whatsoever. I have always got a dealer discount on any purchase I have made. Of course I treat them as well also. Usually 3 or 4 times a year I take the boys down there a couple dozen Dunkin Dognuts. One hand washes the other.

Same with my NAPA. I try to buy from the little local guys.

Since 1982, there have been a half dozen NAPA's in Roanoke, some Bumper to Bumper's, Federated's, as well as a few others. ALL locally owned. :bigthink:

They all scoot their S-10 trucks around delivering to auto repair shops. That GOT to be their money maker.

Not ONE of them is interested in walk-in business. Advance Auto beats them on price 100% of the time,

For them to get my business is like :beatdeadhorse:

I now Amazon 100% before any local gets a sale, it is GREAT being retired, who cares if the car can't run for three days!! :bigeyes:

And the GT parts,,, :biggrin2:,,, I got the lawn mowing covered, even after a month!!

http://i1104.photobucket.com/albums/...ps88051634.jpg

I have never had a problem with our NAPA. Everying I have ever bought from there works great and at a good price. I suppose it doesnt hurt that my NAPA is connected to the warehouse/distribution center :biggrin2:

Napa , is nice when you want certain brands ( gates, felpro, mr gasket & so on) but you pay a price for this, additional shipping & handling , stocking then they have the attitude they did you a favor & mark up franchise % brand % before adding on state taxes ! So a $5.00 part now gets marked up 75- 125% before it even gets to the store computer then the franchise owner needs his mark up for over head & profit . Other chains don' charge for store to store sales unless over nite shipping is involved and you can get same brands most of the time! :bash2: so how long do you want to :beatdeadhorse:

My last post about NAPA, the guy in Galax is an independent, he will match the big guys on price, he can make hydraulic hoses and his service is good. I want to see him stay in business. I'm tired of the big chains killing the little guy. :beerchug:

That's the exact comment I was going to make. I'm lucky enough to have a NAPA warehouse in town. When I need something, I call them and ask them to truck it off to the store I want to pick it up from. Or, if the store I want to pick it up from has it, they call them and have them pull it for me.

I've never had an issue with NAPA doing it that way. The really small "Mom and Pop" NAPAs are very hit and miss. I've been in really great stores and I've also stomped out of really bad stores wishing I had a Molotov...

Surprisingly, though this is of little help in the Cub world, I've had tremendous success with Autozone as far as being helpful and uniform. (I know... I wouldn't believe me either).

Our NAPA only offers China tie rod end, ball joints, etc. Advance Auto sells Made In USA!! :bigeyes:

I do love Advance, but it's funny that you mention that...

About 3 years ago I rebuilt ALL of the steering on my girlfriend's (now Fiance) '93 Escort... She didn't have much cash so I was deal hunting, but I didn't want to buy junk either. So, Advance had one of their "buy $150 online, get $50 free" sales and hooked up ALL made in USA TRW steering components (at the time I was still working for International Truck, and we did a lot of business with TRW so I had faith)... Ordered them online, went to the store to pick them up, at a significant price premium over the regular Advance stuff, only to discover that they had NO grease zerks... Not a single ball joint nor tie rod end had a zerk to be found. She needed the car back so I hung them on there and so far so good, but I was very disappointed...

I'm glad that the stuff I'm really interested in has a healthy ground base of supporters (cubs, Mustangs, JBL Hi-Fi/Pro, etc, etc) that can steer me to the good stuff so that kinda crap doesn't happen again.