The Niello Company started with a man in possession of exceptional talent. Louis Niello understood automobiles. He knew how they worked and how to fix them. The son of Italian immigrants settling in San Francisco during the 1900s, Louis Niello displayed an unusually high mechanical aptitude by age 10. He loved cars and anything associated with them. He raced motorcycles, worked as a chauffeur and eventually landed a job as a mechanic at a San Francisco Packard distributor, Earl C. Anthony, which serviced and sold to California, Nevada and Utah.