Auction Direct USA loses NC jobs grant after exiting greater Triangle town
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- North Carolina ended a 2023 incentive for Auction Direct USA to hire in Oxford, NC
- Auction Direct USA vacated its Granville County facility two years ago
- Auction Direct continues as a Raleigh dealership on Glenwood Avenue
The business behind a once-growing network of used-vehicle stores has lost its North Carolina incentive to create 171 jobs north of the Triangle. Local officials say the company, Auction Direct USA, has already left.
On Tuesday, the North Carolina Department of Commerce ended a 2023 job development investment grant for Auction Direct to expand in the Granville County seat of Oxford, about 30 miles northeast of Durham.
The company had promised to add these new positions by the end of 2024. Instead, that was the year Auction Direct vacated its Oxford car reconditioning facility, said Charla Duncan, Granville County’s economic development director. State business registration records show Auction Direct USA Raleigh, the specific subsidiary that received the jobs grant, then dissolved.
In late 2024, Raleigh-based auto network Westgate Auto Group purchased Auction Direct USA’s dealership on Glenwood Avenue and dropped the “USA” from the name.
Auction Direct USA was eligible to receive up to $2 million in state payroll tax breaks had it met its Granville hiring and investment targets, which included retaining roughly 80 existing employees. The state said it has not distributed any money under this grant. The N.C. Economic Investment Committee voted to terminate its grant at a meeting Tuesday due to Auction Direct USA’s failure to file a required report.
Most economic projects North Carolina supports with performance-based job development investment grants, or JDIGs, never achieve their announced goals. Since 2007, Commerce Department data shows the state has awarded more than $5 billion in JDIG incentives yet has only actually paid out around $227.3 million. While many JDIG projects remain active, this disbursement rate represents less than 5% of the initial awarded amounts.
Headquartered outside Rochester, New York, Auction Direct USA aimed to rival used auto retailers like CarMax by opening a repair facility in Oxford. “Every day, hundreds of vehicles expertly reconditioned by our technicians will be made available to our partners, strengthening the automotive supply chain up and down the East Coast,” CEO Tim Frank said after North Carolina announced the economic project in June 2023.
Frank’s company had committed to pay average annual wages of $88,250, compared to the Granville County average wage (at the time) of around $48,000. Counted among the Triangle’s halo communities, Oxford has not experienced the explosive growth seen in towns south and west of Raleigh.
But it has attracted a fair number of manufacturers, including Altec, Bridgestone, Saint-Gobain and the cosmetics and beauty company Revlon. Duncan said the startup Plantd, which makes building materials out of long thick grass, today operates near where Auction Direct recently left.
“That’s what we do here,” she said. “It’s our bread and butter. We manufacture things, and we have been for generations.”
