Carvana adds 100 jobs at its southwest Charlotte auction site, none requiring a degree

Carvana is adding about 100 jobs at its ADESA Charlotte wholesale auction site at 11600 Fruehauf Drive in southwest Charlotte, the company announced on September 15. The online car retailer is bringing inspection and reconditioning work to the existing facility, and hiring has already begun, according to The Charlotte Ledger.

The expansion turns a wholesale auction site into one of the company’s inspection and reconditioning centers, the facilities where cars bought from customers are checked and prepared before being listed for sale.

The details.

• The roles cover vehicle inspection, reconditioning and fulfillment, and include both skilled and entry level positions.
• None of the positions require a college degree, and all come with benefits, according to the company.
• ADESA Charlotte has operated at the site for more than 30 years and will continue its auction services alongside the new work.
• Carvana first came to North Carolina in 2014, according to WSOC.

What the site does

Carvana bought the ADESA auction business in 2022, which gave the company dozens of large sites across the country. The Charlotte expansion follows a pattern of adding retail preparation work to those sites, so a car traded in nearby can be inspected, repaired and photographed locally instead of shipped elsewhere. For North Carolina customers, the company says the change is meant to support wider selection and faster delivery.

Brian Boyd, the company’s senior vice president of inventory, said ADESA Charlotte had been an important part of the community for more than 30 years and that the company was building on that foundation, in a statement carried by several outlets.

Where the site sits

Fruehauf Drive runs off Westinghouse Boulevard in the industrial corridor of southwest Charlotte, near the airport and the I-485 interchanges. The area holds a large share of the county’s distribution and light industrial employment, and the jobs added here are the kind that corridor supports: shift work, on site, with a commute by car.

In context

The announcement lands in a month of manufacturing and logistics news for the region, and it is a smaller item than most. It matters for a different reason. The positions are the entry level, no degree, with benefits jobs that the county’s growth has produced fewer of than its headline numbers suggest, and a hundred of them in one place is worth noting.

Our read: the auction site has been on Fruehauf Drive longer than most of the neighborhoods around it. The change is that the cars now stay to be worked on, and the work comes with a paycheck that does not require a diploma.

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