LKQ Corporation is the nation’s largest supplier of recycled, aftermarket, and reconditioned car and truck parts and heavy-duty truck parts. Since 1998, LKQ Corporation has been the frontrunner in providing “Like, Kind, and Quality,” a standard automotive industry expression for used vehicle parts that are considered as good as new, at affordable prices without compromising the integrity of the products. Today, this billion-dollar industry operates a network of more than 430 facilities in the US, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and Europe.
LKQ Corporation was founded in 1998 with the purchase of Triplett Automotive Recycling of Akron, Ohio. We sought out to build a company that would gain a reputation for the quality and consistency it offered. Some in the industry doubted that a new national conglomerate could successfully accomplish, and cost-effectively garner, this reputation from customers, as customers from one side of the country received parts from an unknown supplier. Despite such concerns, LKQ grew into a network of 38 salvage yards and 12 distribution centers, operating across the continental US by the early 2000s.
LKQ continued to expand its market share by moving into the aftermarket replacement parts. In 2004, the sales of the aftermarket parts began with the acquisition of Global Trade Alliance. By 2007, we doubled in size with the Keystone Automotive acquisitions, as well as acquisitions of self-service used parts facilities, in which customers remove their own parts from wrecked vehicles.
By the end of the decade, we had built up the largest network of automotive salvage yards in North America, expanding the amount of aftermarket parts we offered, as well as boosting the number of self-service parts in North America and Central America. Since then, we have added a heavy truck division, expanded into European markets with Euro Cars, and become a major distributor of paint, body, and equipment.
Although LKQ has grown into a nationally recognized company, our values have remained the same—the company is still committed to helping customers repair their vehicles quickly, economically, and in an environmentally friendly way.
