SPOTLIGHT ON EXCELLENCE

Racing to Win Baird’s Auto Parts Inc.

BY LYNN NOVELLI

This auto recycler is proudly certified and highly competitive, but Baird’s holds the relationships to their customers as the premier piece of their business model.

T

he Baird family has a long history of beating the competition, both on the stock car track and in the auto recycling industry. When family patriarch Jesse Baird, now 85, founded Baird’s Auto Parts in 1959 in Fairdale, KY, near Louisville, he dedicated his days to auto recycling and his weekends and evenings to stock car racing. Baird competed in major races around the south until 1979 – includ- ing the Automobile Racing Club of America-sanctioned Daytona 200 – and earned a place in the Kentucky Motorsports Hall of Fame. For the final 20 years of his career,

Baird’s Auto Parts was one of the fea- tured sponsor names on his race car. “I have to say that my father being a fairly well-known stock car driver helped propel his [auto recycling] business in the early days,” says Russell Baird, Manager, Baird’s Auto Parts.

November-December 2015 | Automotive Recycling 63

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