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BUSINESS Business Profiles
ROAD RUNNERS O’Reilly Auto Parts might have started small, but it always dreamed big. BY TOM CARLSON
THE START OF SOMETHING BIG he story begins in when . . was hired as a salesman for the ansas ity firm red ampbell uto Supply. In 6, he moved his family to Springfield to assume management of Link uto Supply stores. our years later, his 6-year-old son harles (nicknamed hub oined the company. ears later, hub’s children would follow his e ample. hub’s daughter, osalie, remembers working on inventory on school nights years later. y dad would bring home at night these trays with cards for ordering parts, and I would go through the sales tickets to determine how many spark plugs were sold that day and fill out the cards for ordering more. y , most people . .’s age were eyeing retirement, but he and hub had bigger plans.
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THE CENTENNIAL
The O’Reilly family credits much of the company’s success to their team and to the company’s focus on treating everyone fairly.
learned about people by observing how others conducted themselves, he said. It is the people who make a business what it is. o be successful we must share the fruits of the venture as well as the burden.
C.F. and his son, Chub, launched O’Reilly Automotive in 1957. By 1993, the company had grown so much, the family took it public.
hey decided to start their own company and brought along fellow employees from Link when they started ’ eilly uto. rom the start, . . and hub adopted policies the company still follows today. hey considered workers members of a team, not mere employees. eam members could own stock in the company and promotions were almost entirely from within the company. he ’ eilly company culture is that you treat everyone like family, says longtime family banker ob ulp. he ’ eilly family, a longtime supporter of atholic missions in the area, also adopted the iblical olden ule to treat others as they would want to be treated themselves. hub, who died in , e plained their thinking. We
LEARNING TO DELEGATE heir business model was so successful that four years later in 6 , the ’ eillys formed ark utomotive istributors and began wholesaling to other auto parts stores. rowth of the stores was slow at first because . . had imposed a rule that an ’ eilly family member had to be physically at each of their stores. hat policy limited the number of stores to two until hub’s oldest son harlie oined the company and opened a third store in oplin in 66. In those early days, harlie would call on area truck stops and tell them that if they needed a part in the middle of the night to give him a call. e meant it. No matter the hour, harlie would get out of bed and deliver the part they needed. In the s when . . was nearing years old, the family patriarch decided to slow down and turn over control to his 6 -year-old son. hub instituted a ma or change by relin uishing absolute control and delegating responsibility to his son harlie and afterward to Larry, osalie and avid as they oined the company. hub’s move worked, and growth picked up after the change. I used my (children’s youth and vitality to move the family business forward, hub says. he e periment worked. Now the company is committed to this decentrali ed approach. s Larry remembers, hub was like a coach and assigned positions to his children on the
Photos courtesy O’Reilly Auto Parts
If you were to prick the finger of a member of the ’ eilly family, they would, in the words of avid ’ eilly, bleed green. ccording to Irish folklore, St. atrick once used the shamrock to demonstrate the principles of the rinity to believers he shamrock has three leaves. We’ve somehow come to associate St. atrick’s ay and the luck of the Irish with a four-leaf clover, but the icon on the ’ eilly utomotive logo is the real deal It’s a shamrock with three leaves. he ’ eilly Shamrock stands for a company that made its own luck by emphasi ing the three values of honesty, integrity and hard work. With that foundation, ’ eilly utomotive has grown into the third largest auto parts company in the nited States with more than , stores in states and more than , team members. It is a uni ue story about a family that spans three generations and years in the business, starting with randfather . . ’ eilly and followed by his son hub and then hub’s four children harlie, osalie, Larry and avid.
