Dollar General

Dollar General is an American chain of general stores selling an assortment of national name brands products at discount prices. Categories includes food and beverages, cleaning supplies, health and beauty, apparel, household and electronics. Dollar General also developped its store brand called DG. As of January 2020, Dollar General operates a network of 16,278 neighborhood general stores in 46 states the United States.

James Luther Turner was only 11 when his father died in 1902. He quit school and worked on the family farm to support his mother and his family. He later worked as a traveling dry goods salesman for a wholesale grocer based in Nashville for ten years, then moved to Scottsville, Kentucky, with his family. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Turner started buying bankrupt general stores, taking his only son Cal with him to these closeouts. In 1939, James and Cal became partners and founded a wholesale dry goods business they called J.L. Turner and Son. The first location opened that same year in Scottsville and by the mid-1950s, they had 35 locations in Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1955, Cal Turner converted their Springfield store into the first Dollar General location, a store where no item would cost more than $1. James Turner died in 1964 and Cal succeeded his father. In 1965, the third generation of James' family joined the company when Cal Turner, Jr. started working with his dad. Cal Jr. became President and CEO of Dollar General in 1977 and, when he retired in 2002, the company was operating more than 6,000 locations.