Bob Lowth Ford is celebrating 60 years in business

BEMIDJI — Business was a family affair for the late Bob Lowth, whether it was his relatives or the employees. 60 years after he bought the Ford dealership in Bemidji, two of Bob’s sons are carrying on the tradition. Jim and Todd Lowth will celebrate the dealership’s 60th anniversary next week with their 34 colleagues.

“Bob was a great man,” said Todd Moudry, CEO of Bob Lowth Ford. “I’d come visit him and I’d want to talk business, but he’d always wave at me and say, ‘How’s your family?’ He was more interested in you personally than if you sold a car that day. It is something I will never forget. He truly cared about his people, as did his sons. They got this attribute from their father.”

Contributed/Family below

Bob and Harvey Groslie came to Bemidji in 1964 from the Fargo-Moorhead area and purchased the Bemidji Motors Ford dealership from Herb and Jim Conner. Groslie-Lowth Ford was located at 315 Third St. NW (now a parking lot near Northern Surplus). In 1968 it became Bob Lowth Ford when Groslie opened his own used car lot.

Because downtown only had room for a few vehicles, most of the inventory was kept north of town at 3010 Bemidji Ave. N. The representative office moved there in 1974, when a new building was built.

Bob Lowth had worked in the business office at a Chevrolet dealership in Moorhead and was always most comfortable with accounting duties in his upstairs office.

“I can’t remember more than four or five times when Dad’s office door was ever closed,” Jim Lowth said. “If anyone came up the stairs and wanted to talk to Dad, whether they wanted to tell him that someone had done a great job or were unhappy about something, he never had the door closed.”

Bob Lowth worked until his death in 2008 at the age of 81. His wife, Naomi, died in 2021, aged 94.

Politeness / Lowth family

Jim and Todd both started in the business when they were teenagers. Jim swept the floors and ran the tracks while Todd polished the chrome bumpers and helped with the bodywork. Now, Todd, 64, is the principal dealer and president of GJT Inc., the company that owns the property. Jim, 66, is GJT’s head of customer relations and secretary-treasurer. Their sister, Gaylene Nichols, who lives in Montana, is vice president of GJT.

Jim entered sales when he was 20 years old.

“I’m still selling,” he said. “I still have a few clients who won’t start with anyone else. You need to spend some time getting to know the customer. Then you want to find out their wishes. Then you find out if their wants meet their needs and you combine them together.”

The sale didn’t come as easily for Todd. He remembers selling his first, a Mercury Capri, to friend Bill Batchelder. But shyness often got the best of him.

“We used to have a system up,” Todd recalled. “When someone came to the lot, he said ‘up’. The sales staff took turns working with those customers, but “I was so shy that when it was my turn to have an ‘up’ I would have. to go to the bathroom,” he said. “I was terrified. I got over it after many years of meeting good people.”

Todd is back in the office these days while also dealing with a battle with cancer that began three years ago. He was diagnosed with metastatic colorectal cancer and underwent a rare procedure at the Mayo Clinic: hepatic artery infusion pump chemotherapy combined with surgical resection and ablation. He continues to make regular trips to Rochester, Minnesota, for treatments as doctors monitor the disease.

Dennis Doeden / Bemidji Pioneer

While Jim and Todd consider themselves semi-retired, they know the dealership is in good hands with Moudry at the helm.

“We’re very fortunate to have a lot of long-term employees,” Todd Lowth said. “And Bemidji has been very good to the family.”

Moudry added: “It’s hard to survive in any business for 60 years, let alone the car business. Bob didn’t do it alone. Todd doesn’t do it alone. We were lucky to be blessed with good people.”

Charley Gilbert / Bemidji Pioneer

Dennis Doeden, former editor of the Bemidji Pioneer, is a feature reporter. He is a graduate of Metropolitan State University with a degree in Communications Management.