The History
of Craig & Wheeler

This is the short version of the Craig & Wheeler history: two farm-raised Tennesseans whose friendly competition selling houses for someone else turned into a company their own families still run, more than fifty years later.

Two Farm Kids Turned Realtors

Auburn Wheeler and David Craig set out to build careers in real estate, earning their licenses and going to work for a local firm in Shelbyville. Auburn had been raised in the Pleasant Grove community of Bedford County; David grew up in Belfast, in Marshall County. Both men understood, in a way city agents couldn’t, what mattered to the farmers, families, and small business owners who made up their clientele.

It didn’t take long for the two of them to realize they were carrying an outsized share of the office’s business. If they were doing that well working for someone else, what could they do on their own?

Taking the Big Step

In 1973, Auburn and David found out. They left the firm and opened their own company, and Craig & Wheeler was born.

What began as two names on the door grew quickly into something bigger. David’s wife, Belinda Wheeler Craig, joined the firm not long after it opened, and Auburn’s son-in-law, Alan Gill, followed soon after. Real estate, it turned out, was becoming a family trade.

The Ice Cream Supper That Changed Everything

Auctioneering wasn’t part of the original plan. It arrived almost by accident, one summer evening at a community club’s ice cream supper, when someone asked Auburn — a Realtor, not an auctioneer — to sell off a table of desserts: fried pies, carrot cakes, pecan pies.

Auburn said yes before he’d thought it through. Then he looked out at eighty or ninety faces waiting on him, felt his knees go weak, and did the only sensible thing: he grabbed his wife and left.

On the drive home, she asked what had happened. When he told her, she turned the car around. Go back, she said, and honor what you agreed to do.

He did. That reluctant walk back into the ice cream supper turned into a career, and eventually a second half of the family business. David and Alan both went on to earn their own auctioneer’s licenses, David became a partner in the firm, and “Auction” joined the name.

Three Generations and Counting

More than fifty years after Auburn and David took their own big step, Craig & Wheeler Realty & Auction is still a family business, still rooted in Shelbyville, and still guided by the instincts that built it: know your community, do right by your clients, and show up when someone needs you.

Whatever big step you’re planning next — buying a home, selling one, or putting something up for auction — we’d be honored to help you take it. Contact us anytime.