Bill Davis was born in Arkansas and had already built a quite sucessfull truck company before starting up his racing team. In fact, racing for him started out as a hobby, some way to get away from work and relax. In high school, Davis started working for a local Top Fuel drag racing team and then moved on to motocross, which he raced from 1969 to 1972.

In 1975, Davis started his own trucking service, Bill Davis Trucking, with the purchase of one truck. It was his friendship with Julian Martin, Mark Martin's father that prompted this purchase. Davis started working at JMI, Julian Martin Inc., and the relationship grew from leasing his trucks to Martin, to in 1975 he started dispatching trucks for JMI. After a few years of dispatching, he decided to return to his own company and operate under his own name.

During this period of his life, Davis was still involved with racing and Mark Martin. In 1981, Martin started racing the Winston Cup circuit. Traveling every weekend to the different races was taking too much out of his time and forcing him to be away from his company. So he stopped helping out the Martins.

In 1987, Davis built an ASA car for Mark Martin to drive. In 1988, Jack Roush started his Winston Cup team and asked Mark Martin to drive the No. 6 car. Martin agreed to this, however this left Davis without someone to drive his car. The Carolina Ford dealers picked up the sponsorship and agreed for Martin to drive in the Busch Series.

At the end of 1990 season, Davis decided to move to North Carolina to start his racing team full-time. In 1991, executives at Ford spoke with Davis about a young racer named Jeff Gordon who they eventually hired. In 1992, the race team hired Ray Evernham to work for the team. That year was the company's big breakout year with breaking several records, 11 pole positions, most money in a season and most laps lead. However this moment in the sun did not last as Gordon and crew left for Rick Hendrick. To replace Gordon, they hired Bobby Labonte who finished 19th in the points. Davis and Labonte worked together for two years, before losing Maxwell House as a sponsor. With no sponser, Labonte was free to find his own ride, which he did under Joe Gibbs Racing.

To replace Labonte, Davis hired Randy Lajoie, however a lack of chemistry between the two of them caused a split at mid-season. Ward Burton came on to replace Lajoie and has been with the team since. Burton and Davis first won at North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham and have had a good relationship since.

Information for this nodde was taken from www.billdavisracing.com

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