Harbor Freight Tools Coming to Greenville

Posted by Jim Satterwhite | Jan 25, 2020 | FRIENDLEE PLACE HOME, NEWS | 0 |

Harbor Freight Tools Coming to Greenville

Harbor Freight Tools coming to Greenville

Jim Satterwhite

Harbor Freight Tools is a discount chain that started in Calabasas, California in the mid-1970s. Today it has over 20,000 employees and does Five-billion in sales annually. A new store is under construction just south of the Atwoods near Wesley and Woodrow Streets. The Greenville store will join new stores in Plano, Sherman and Durant, Oklahoma.

Vannoy Construction of Jefferson, North Carolina is the prime contractor. The company was started in 1952 by Jim Vannoy and his children have taken the company to legendary status over the last fifty years or so. Today Vannoy is a recognized contractor in the Smoky Mountain Region of the Carolinas, the Tennessee Valley and beyond. Vannoy is the prime contractor for the Greenville Harbor Freight Store.

CalHar of Mellissa, Texas is a sub-contractor specializing in sewers, water piping, and underground stormwater retention systems. Men and machinery were at work making a new sewer tap on Woodrow Street. In addition, the company is doing earth work for the various systems. The building should be finished by Fall 2020.

About The Author

Jim Satterwhite

Boxcar Jim Satterwhite I was not always known as Boxcar Jim (who would have imagined) but earned the name at a railroad trade show in Chicago in 1988. I left Greenville in 1968 for an Air Force career that spanned twenty years. I had just retired in 1988 and started my company, Coastline Rail. I joined with an associate, John Licht. We acquired a fleet of used gondola cars and sold them to Steel Processing. The company would later be known as Progress Rail and merge with Caterpillar to be a major player in the railroad scrap business. John and I walked into the hospitality suite in the penthouse of the Chicago Hilton in September and the owner of the company announced “Boxcar Jim”. I lived with that name for the last 31-years. My lovely bride, Nancy, and I lived in Hendersonville, Tennessee. We met all of the Grand Old Opry stars. Roy Acuff, Johnny Cash, the Oak Ridge Boys, Roy Orbison, Dottie West and many others. Eventually, I was recruited by another company specializing in railroad equipment and moved to Mt. Pleasant, North Carolina in 1995. Nancy and I moved back home to Greenville in 2001 where I continued to run Coastline Rail. About that time, I met Friendlee at a little place called Clyde’s Shoe Repair. Our friendship has gone on for eighteen years. I became a writer for Hunt County News. Friendlee and other investors purchased the company and it became Friendlee News. We now have YouTube TV shows, a live production every Wednesday from the Texan Theater and now a streaming radio station known as Friendlee Radio. Texans, Legends and Outlaws! I look forward to bringing you “The Good News”.