Constant change.

• Position: North Carolina's top 100 private companies - Directory

Even the old reliables on our annual ranking of private companies must race to keep pace.

In 1984, the year BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA and Arthur Andersen LLP joined forces to create the North Carolina 100, Mike McGuire was a young senior accountant assigned to do scut work for that first ranking of the state's largest private companies. Now J. Michael McGuire is a partner, in charge of the international accounting firm's enterprise practice for the Carolinas - and of the annual rankings in both states.

"I've gone from doing all the checking and verifying of figures to being the guy who gets quoted," he says, obviously delighted at the changes the years have brought. But those affecting him personally and professionally pale before the changes in the list itself.

The 100 companies in the first ranking had combined revenues of about $6.32 billion, a figure surpassed by the 40 manufacturers alone on this year's list, whose revenues total $6.86 billion. (Half the companies in the original ranking were manufacturers.) As a whole, revenues for the North Carolina 100 have nearly tripled, totaling $18.40 billion this year. The number of jobs the companies provide has grown from 71,000 to 119,194.

"We've had about 200 companies that have made the North Carolina 100 during that time," McGuire says. "And over the years we've seen a lot more variety in the industries on it. If you look back at that first ranking, you'll see that it was dominated by furniture and textile companies. Today, one of the things that is so striking about the North Carolina 100 is its diversity, which reflects the diversification of the state's economy during this period."

Despite all that, some familiar names continue to show up year after year. Twenty-six of the companies that made the cut for the first ranking are on this year's list - 20 of them each of the 15 times it has been compiled. (For an update on companies at the top of the North Carolina 100 in 1984, see page 63.)

For the second year, Raleigh-based General Parts Inc., the nation's second-largest distributor [TABULAR DATA OMITTED] of wholesale automobile parts, heads the list. In the No. 2 spot is Gastonia-based Parkdale Mills Inc., the country's largest manufacturer of cotton yarn and a fixture on the North Carolina 100 since its beginning (see page 60). Last year, Parkdale ranked fifth. The lion's share of its growth since 1997's list came from its joint venture with Unifi Inc., a Greensboro-based public company.

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