Price Automotive and Fred’s Off Road: The Warehouse Behind Go4x4It

The story began at a Sinclair station

Price Automotive’s 1999 history starts in 1949, when brothers Ed Price Sr. and Fred Price Sr. opened Price Brothers Service Station in Lenoir. The company remembered postwar customers asking for accessories that were difficult to find locally: mirrors, taillights, exhaust tips, ventshades, wheel covers, and the period details that personalized a car. Those requests became Price Brothers Auto Supply. By the 1960s the station had closed, and wholesale and retail accessories had become the business. Later trade reporting repeated the Sinclair-station origin, giving the company account a second documentary trail.

A warehouse is a service system

The 1978 change to Price Automotive Warehouse Co. described more than a new sign. By 1999, Price said it carried about 70 product lines, produced its own catalog and flyers, offered inside and outside sales, shipped qualifying orders the same day, and ran delivery routes across parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and neighboring territory. A Datatron business system connected sales, inventory, ordering, payroll, accounts receivable, and warehouse functions. PageMaker, Photoshop, a UPS computer, credit-card processing, phones, printed catalogs, and people still had to make the system work together.

Price and Fred’s were two faces of the same operation

The earliest archived pages divide the job clearly. Price Automotive spoke to speed shops, parts stores, 4WD centers, installers, tire stores, dealers, and other trade customers. Fred’s Off Road spoke to the public, offering a printed catalog, phone and fax ordering, a secure online form, Jeep accessories, and four-wheel-drive parts. Fred’s called itself the retail division of an old Southern performance warehouse distributor and used the same 1949 lineage and Lenoir location. The relationship becomes explicit in the public record when Fred Price Jr.’s obituary identifies him as owner/operator of both Price Automotive and Fred’s Off Road.

Jeep was present from the first archive capture

Fred’s January 1998 Jeep page offered a Bestop soft top for the CJ5. That small page matters because it anchors Jeep merchandising at the start of the surviving web record. The connection grows stronger in the paired Bestop catalogs: Fred’s 2003 collection 14 and Price’s 2004 collection 14 use the same collection number, product hierarchy, brand copy, and Fred’s-hosted image paths. The surviving pages are visually incomplete, but their HTML records Jeep tops, accessories, pickup tops, and related categories moving through a shared catalog operation.

Ecommerce did not replace the old machinery

Price kept adding channels rather than replacing them cleanly. Its 2007 catalog exposed search, a Jeep and 4 Wheel Drive category, an eBay store, CatalogRack, and an `order@fredsoffroad.com` reply address. Trade interviews describe eBay as a way to move obsolete, damaged, and discontinued stock. Fred Price Jr. manually maintained listings, then eBay orders were entered and invoiced through Datatron before the normal warehouse staff shipped them. The online catalog used another system, Autologue ePart Connection, for status information. The customer saw a page and a buy button; the business saw catalog data, fitment, pricing, stock, invoicing, photography, and fulfillment crossing several tools.

Fred Price Jr. carried the family operation into the web era

The archive names Fred Price Jr. as Price Automotive president in 1999. Later reporting shows him learning desktop-publishing software, maintaining the online catalog and eBay store from a laptop, photographing products when manufacturer images were unavailable, and still relying on the paper catalog, outside sales, inside sales, and delivery. Lee Pennell, Price’s vice president, separately described the pressure from changing customer demographics and online competition. Fred died on May 18, 2017. The obituary’s owner/operator language is the strongest public source connecting the warehouse and retail names to one person.

Eric’s chapter must stay firsthand

Eric Gajewski says he later bought the Lenoir distributor operation associated with Price Automotive and Fred’s Off Road and formed EKG Distributors. In his account, that is why Go4x4It acquired its ecommerce life: the operation and remaining inventory needed a public home. He became a WeatherTech distributor and retained Jeep-oriented WeatherTech and Bestop stock. No public sale notice or contract has been located, so the article does not claim a specific legal entity, asset list, purchase price, or closing date. The acquisition language remains Eric’s attributed recollection unless transaction records are added.

The 2021 files prove work, not a contract

Restricted internal records corroborate the distributor phase without exposing commercial details. A WeatherTech and MacNeil catalog created on February 8, 2021 and later modified by Eric contains 15,538 product records, including 423 Jeep fitment rows and 368 unique Jeep part numbers. Eric-created workbooks from October and November track Curt, AVS, Bestop, and Jeep applications, including CJ, TJ, and JKU products. That is evidence of active product-data and inventory work. It is not evidence of which corporate entity or assets changed hands, and no costs, quantities, UPCs, or private workbook images are published here.

The business failure is context, not the conclusion

Eric describes EKG Distributors as a venture that did not work the way he hoped, and he does not want that experience turned into the spectacle of the story. The historically useful part is what the attempt reveals: even in 2021, a distributor still had to reconcile vendor files, fitment, inventory, MAP pricing, product copy, warehouse stock, drop shipping, and a storefront. The systems were newer than Price’s first Datatron installation, but the labor underneath the catalog had not disappeared.

Go4x4It brings the knowledge back around

The current Go4x4It store identifies itself as operating in care of EKG Distributors and carries the product categories that survived that chapter, including WeatherTech and Bestop. The new publication is not migrating that WooCommerce catalog. A future store, if pursued, belongs to a later FluentCart project. Here, the important inheritance is knowledge: how parts are described, how Jeep fitment goes wrong, how catalogs evolve, and how regional businesses connect manufacturers to owners. The line back to Eric’s present company, EKG Marketing, is brief but real. The marketing work, the parts work, and the history project share the same habit of making complicated product information understandable.

What remains open

The highest-value missing evidence is the acquisition file: a bill of sale, asset schedule, closing email, or recorded account that states exactly what Eric bought and when. The project also still needs an official North Carolina filing, a period Price Brothers Service Station advertisement or city-directory entry, original Price and Fred’s paper catalogs, and records explaining who operated the business after 2017. Those gaps are recorded rather than filled with inference. They are expansion targets for a living cornerstone, not reasons to flatten the history already supported by the archive.

Timeline

1. 1949Price Automotive’s company history says Ed Price Sr. and Fred Price Sr. open Price Brothers Service Station as a Sinclair station in Lenoir.
2. 1950s-1960sCustomer demand for accessories leads to Price Brothers Auto Supply; by the 1960s the service station has closed and wholesale and retail accessories are the focus.
3. 1978Fred Price Sr. buys Ed’s share and the company says its name changes to Price Automotive Warehouse Co.
4. Late 1985After Fred Sr. dies, the family continues and incorporates the business as Price Automotive Warehouse Inc.
5. January 1998Fred’s earliest archived homepage describes the store as the retail division of an old performance warehouse distributor; a Jeep page advertises a Bestop CJ5 soft top.
6. December 1998Price’s archived homepage presents the wholesale side: roughly 70 brands, national shipping, and trade customers ranging from 4WD centers to speed shops.
7. February 1999Price publishes a detailed company history describing its catalog, Datatron business system, desktop publishing, UPS computer, sales staff, and multi-state delivery service.
8. 2003-2004Fred’s and Price publish matching Bestop collection 14 pages with the same category architecture and Fred’s-hosted catalog assets.
9. Late 2000sTrade reporting describes Price’s paper and online catalogs, eBay closeout store, Datatron invoicing, ePart Connection status data, and manual cross-system labor.
10. 2011Fred’s still describes itself as the retail outlet of a long-running warehouse distributor serving performance, custom, Jeep, 4WD, truck, and SUV customers.
11. May 2017Fred Willard Price Jr. dies; his obituary identifies him as owner/operator of both Price Automotive and Fred’s Off Road.
12. 2021Eric’s account places his acquisition and the formation of EKG Distributors in the next chapter; restricted catalog and inventory files document active WeatherTech, Bestop, and Jeep product work during the year.
13. 2026Go4x4It turns the knowledge behind its earlier catalog and retail work into a source-backed Jeep history publication.

Sources and research trail

This article cites 15 public records, period publications, organizer histories, and other identified sources. External links open the underlying evidence.

• Wayback: 1998 Price Automotive Warehouse homepage (opens in a new tab)
• Wayback: 1999 Price Automotive company history (opens in a new tab)
• Wayback: 1998 Fred’s Off Road homepage (opens in a new tab)
• Wayback: 1998 Fred’s Jeep and Bestop page (opens in a new tab)
• Wayback: 2003 Fred’s Bestop collection 14 (opens in a new tab)
• Wayback: 2004 Price Bestop collection 14 (opens in a new tab)
• Wayback: 2007 Price Automotive ecommerce catalog (opens in a new tab)
• Wayback: 2011 Fred’s Off Road About page (opens in a new tab)
• Fred Willard Price Jr. obituary (opens in a new tab)
• Trade profile: Cleaning up stock with an online store (opens in a new tab)
• Trade report: Aftermarket finds new customers on eBay (opens in a new tab)
• Trade report: Specialty parts sales continue to evolve (opens in a new tab)
• Price Automotive corporate registry reproduction (opens in a new tab)
• Current Go4x4It About page (opens in a new tab)
• Current Go4x4It Contact page identifying EKG Distributors (opens in a new tab)

Corrections and updates

This page is part of a living research project. Substantive corrections are recorded with a date and source. Submit or review a correction.