Schneider was born on August 11, 1926, in Maplewood, New Jersey. His father, Frank Sr., worked at Western Electric in Newark. The eldest of five children — his siblings were Eleanor, Lorraine, Robert, and Charles — Schneider left home at sixteen and began racing cars at the age of twenty-one.
Schneider's career began on June 15, 1947, when he earned $70 for a seventh-place finish at Flemington Speedway, driving his own street car to the track. From that modest start, he built an extraordinary record across nearly all racing disciplines available to American short-track racers of the postwar era. He routinely entered as many as eight races per week across multiple classes simultaneously, competing in stock cars, modifieds, midgets, and sprint cars.
His career highlights include winning the 1952 NASCAR modified title, in which he is believed to have scored at least 100 wins in that season alone. He repeated that remarkable total in 1958 and recorded his sole NASCAR Grand National Series victory that same year at Old Dominion Speedway in Virginia, driving a 1957 Chevrolet. Schneider also won the Langhorne National Open, the country's premier event for Sportsman and Modified competitors, in both 1954 and 1962.
In 1963, Schneider achieved one of the most efficient single seasons in regional short-track history, winning four track points championships simultaneously at Middletown, Harmony, Reading, and Nazareth — all in a car he purchased for $1,000. His primary racing venues were the Orange County Fair Speedway in Middletown, New York; Reading Fairgrounds Speedway and Nazareth Speedway in Pennsylvania; and Flemington Speedway and Harmony Speedway in New Jersey. Although he competed in nearly all fifty American states, as well as in the Bahamas and Canada, his career was rooted in the Northeast.
Schneider scored his final feature win on July 31, 1977, at the half-mile dirt track at Nazareth Speedway, closing out a competitive career spanning three decades.
The Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame inducted Schneider in 1992 as part of its inaugural class, recognizing the central role he played in building the modified racing tradition in the northeastern United States. Area Auto Racing News later voted him driver of the century, a reflection of his standing among regional racing historians and fans.
His career is documented in the video "The Old Master: Frankie Schneider," which captures the scope of a racing life that touched virtually every corner of American short-track motorsport. Schneider died on November 11, 2018, at the age of 92.
Schneider's legacy rests on sheer accumulation and consistency across disciplines and decades. With an estimated 750 or more career victories and multiple championship seasons, he stands as one of the most successful short-track racers in American motorsport history, even if much of his record was compiled in regional venues that kept him below the radar of mainstream national coverage.