Parker Boats, founded in 1927, is the nation's oldest family-owned boat dealership. With locations in Orlando and Daytona Beach, Parker Boats is the largest marine dealership in Central Florida. Ironically, however, the boat dealership got its start not in Florida, but in the mountains of western North Carolina.
The business was founded in 1927 by Roy W. Parker, Sr., an ambitious and industrious young man who grew up in the little mountain town of Candler, North Carolina. Although he had only a sixth-grade education, young Roy was determined to succeed. Packing all his belongings in a shoe box, he followed two other brothers to the nearby city of Asheville. One of the brothers had found work as an A-model Ford mechanic, the other as a bricklayer, and Roy learned both trades before turning his attention to the boat business.
Parker got his start racing boats, later building a boat racing course on Lake Lure in the North Carolina mountains. He also operated a boat rental concession on Fontana Lake and an Asheville municipal lake, and operated a sightseeing boat to the Fontana dam and back. Parker also worked as a salesman for a local Cadillac dealer, who allowed him to display his boats in the auto showroom.
His industriousness caught the attention of a Johnson Motors representative who offered him a dealership in Orlando. Parker opened the dealership on West Church St. in 1939, a location he shared with a motorcycle shop.
From 1939 to 1949, Roy Parker divided his time between Florida and North Carolina, selling boats in Orlando in the winter and renting and selling boats on the mountain lakes in the summer. Finally deciding that his future was in Florida, Parker moved to Orlando full-time in 1949.
Roy Parker, Jr., who now serves as president of Parker Boats, joined the business in 1964 and his two brothers, David and Bruce, entered the firm in the early `70s. The two younger brothers were later bought out by Roy, Jr.
Although the firm suffered a big downturn during the oil embargo of the `79, losing half their business almost overnight, the Parkers managed to hold on and rebound once economic conditions improved. Roy Parker, Sr. died in 1990 but remained active in the business until the end. We fixed him up with his own comfortable office at our new location and he came in right up until the day before he died, his son recalls. Sophie Parker, now 95, retired many years ago.
Parker Boats moved to its present location at 455 South Lake Destiny Road in 1985, a move that helped the firm increase business by 150% during the first year in the new building. A second location was opened in Daytona Beach in 2007.