This deal has been working over the last several years.
You might have noticed that there are no more "privately owned" CarQuest stores, even in small towns the CQ that was there is either gone or has gone corporate. All part of the deal.
AA didn't want to deal with private owners, nor did they want to deal with the shops that many of the small town stores had attached to them. ( Smthfield, Clayton, Apex all corporate stores now )
For the near future they (AA) are supposed to leave things as is and run them as separate entities.
All I know about it is what I've gathered from the small stores I deal with on a regular basis, and the stories all seemed to jive as the information was pretty much the same from all as the process unfolded.