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Wilmington, North Carolina: Muffler Man (Gone)

A 14-ft. tall Bunyan-style Muffler Man stood in Goldsboro until 2011, then went into storage. In 2018 he emerged in Wilmington at another White's Tires, then that closed and... back into storage!

White's Tires

Directions:
N. of US Hwy 74 on the west side of Blue Clay Rd
Hours:
July 2019: business closed, statue gone
Status:
Gone

Visitor Tips and News About Muffler Man

Reports and tips from RoadsideAmerica.com visitors and Roadside America mobile tipsters. Some tips may not be verified. Submit your own tip.

Muffler Man

Talked to the folks at White's. The Wilmington location is closed for the time being, and the Muffler Man has been put in storage along with the nearly identical statue that used to stand on the roof of one of the White's locations in Wilson.

[Dean Jeffrey, 08/13/2019]
Muffler Man

Came down to Wilmington to see the Muffler Man and he's gone. Not only is he gone, so is White's Tire.

[Strange Carolinas, 07/13/2019]

White's Tire has several locations, so one of them may already have the Muffler Man. The big fellas don't get thrown away, at least not any more.

Muffler Man.

Muffler Man

Muffler Man found (again)! The muffler man at the White's Tire in Wilmington arrived about a year and a half ago. The guy I talked to on the phone wasn't completely sure, but he thought this one had been in storage at Ed White's house (in Wilson) for quite a while. Presumably, he's the one that used to be on the roof of the former White's Tire in Goldsboro for many years.

[Dean Jeffrey, 05/06/2019]
Goldsboro Muffler Man

The Goldsboro muffler man has finally stepped off the roof. One of his supporting guy wires snapped during a wind storm in early November. He started becoming more and more unstable as the weeks passed, so the guys from White Tire finally came and took him down.

He is now in storage and hopefully will be restored and put up again one day -- when and where is the big question.

[Joel Baker, 11/25/2011]

Muffler Man.

Muffler Man

Muffler Man found! Way back in the late '90s, the Muffler Man Tracking Chart listed a Bunyan as being on the roof of a White's Tire location on South George Street in Goldsboro. When I visited Goldsboro in the early 2000s, I drove from one end of George Street to the other and didn't find him.

I drove around some other likely spots, and didn't see him in any of those either. I even asked in at the only White's Tire listed in the Goldsboro phone book, and the folks working there were polite but had no idea what I was talking about. To compound things, the picture in the Tracking Chart of the purported Goldsboro Muffler Man was obviously a picture of Muffler Man #2 in Wilson NC. So I dutifully reported that there was no Muffler Man in Goldsboro, and that if there ever had been, there wasn't one now, and his status on the Tracking Chart was changed to Gone.

So imagine my surprise when I was driving around Goldsboro ten years later, and came across THIS guy. He's on top of a closed and abandoned White's Tire on S John Street, and he looks like he's been there a really long time.

[Dean Jeffrey, 01/12/2011]

Since your tips record is normally stellar, we'll let you slide on this one, Dean. It probably wasn't responsible for a decade of decimation to Goldsboro tourism!


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