Dealer Profile: Belgrade Sales & Service

Four Generations of Power Equipment Excellence

Belgrade Sales & Service, Belgrade, Montana

By Heather Wilson 

Owning a dealership wasn’t necessarily Bob Wyer’s plan for later in life, but a cross-country move and small engine mechanical knowledge soon turned into his opportunity. Originally from Missouri, Wyer and his wife Pat moved to Belgrade, Montana, in 1975. 

Wyer, with a farming background, went to work at a fertilizer plant while his wife began keeping books at a feed plant. His background as a farmer and his ability to tinker with small engines was a big asset at the plant. At the time, they used nurse trailers equipped with Briggs and Stratton engines, and they pulled these out to the fields. Wyer’s mechanical abilities served the business well here.  

After a while, he began to wonder how he could put his skills to work in an even bigger way. That’s when Wyer and his wife started Belgrade Sales & Service and operated it in the hours after their traditional jobs. Soon they were busy enough to take the business full-time.   

Transitions

In 1978, Roberta Guffey, Bob Wyer’s daughter, and her husband moved up from Kansas to begin working at the dealership.  

“My dad always jokes that he worked here for about a month and realized it was way too much family,” said Jason Guffey, grandson of Wyer and current owner-operator of the dealership. “So, my dad went to work for the fertilizer plant that my grandpa originally worked at.” 

Roberta continued to work alongside her dad and stepmom in the dealership for the next several decades and still works part-time at the dealership today.  

In the early 2000s, Wyer was slowing down. His wife, who had worked alongside him for decades, passed away in 2005. The business was becoming too much for Roberta to handle on her own. Jason watched as his grandfather and mom listed the business for sale in 2006. However, there weren’t any immediate takers, and Jason started to consider leaving his job to help his mom operate the dealership.  

He worked in the dealership as a teenager, but Jason took a job in management at Albertson’s grocery where he learned retail and merchandise display best practices. He had also met his now wife at Albertson’s and later went to work for her father’s construction business.  

Succession

After some thinking, in 2007, Jason and his mom decided to grab an opportunity. Bob Wyer passed the business over to them.  

Jason said the business originally catered to residential customers and farmers. When the 2008 recession hit and other dealerships were closing their doors, Jason saw an opportunity to grow Belgrade Sales & Service into the commercial business. 

“We took a chance, and we went for it,” Jason said. “And ever since then, we’ve quadrupled the business.” 

When that tough economic time struck for many dealers, Belgrade Sales & Service was lucky, Jason says, to have an established history and working capital, as his mom and grandfather always put money back into the business.  

Working Together

Family ownership, though less common in the corporate world, are not unusual in power equipment and powersports dealerships. Although it can present challenges, Roberta said she’s enjoyed the experience of working with family. Daughter Jamie also works in the business. 

“I could count on one hand any arguments that my dad and I had,” Roberta said. “We just had to work together as a team to make those joint decisions.” 

In 2010, Britny Guffey, Jason’s wife, joined the dealership full-time to support their ever-growing IT and marketing needs. “Together, we redid an old family business that never had any marketing,” Jason said. “The business kind of started taking off, and we just slowly started expanding.” 

Over time, the dealership’s needs grew and square footage was added in the early 2000s, 2016 and 2023. In 2021, the dealership welcomed a fourth-generation employee. Jason and Britny’s daughter, Teaghan, joined the parts department full-time. Britny feels that they are blessed to get to work together.  

“I can’t imagine not going to work with Jason and our daughter every day,” Britny said. “It’s pretty awesome to build something with your family, to take something and make it what it is today.” 

Beyond family, Jason said Belgrade Sales & Service has many long-term employees. “We’ve got an extremely loyal group of people,” Jason said. “One of the guys, Jordan Thronson, joined us in 2006 when he was 17 years old. He’s been part of our management team and is like family. I think we have five more employees who have been with us more than 10 years. We’ve been able to cultivate all these people.” 

Jason says it’s worked well for them to be very hands-on and work the business alongside their employees. “I think a lot of owners don’t work the business, they don’t want to be in an office or interact with the employees,” Jason said. “I think they want to see you working with them. Plus, then you kind of have a pulse on whether they’re happy or unhappy or what’s going on at home. We just to try to keep everybody positive and going in the same direction.” Belgrade has 11 full-time employees.  

Robust and Adaptable

When Bob Wyer and his daughter were operating the business, they focused mostly on parts and service. Now, Jason said Belgrade has flipped that and is now about 75 percent new unit sales. Having multiple product lines has been a big plus for the dealership, he believes. Today, the business sells and services more than 10 outdoor power equipment brands in a retail location measuring 17,500 sq ft, with warehouse space of 12,500 sq ft. 

“We’ve gotten comments from sales reps that we have way too many brands,” Britny said. “When the pandemic came, it really paid off to have different avenues of products coming in from different people.” 

She says they sustain all those brands at high levels – no favorites for the staff. The team at Belgrade Sales & Service is able to make product recommendations based on customers’ needs and budgets.  

“Most don’t come in here knowing what they want, so we ask a lot of questions to find out their needs,” Britny said. 

Commercial business makes up approximately 60 percent of the business today. Scag, Exmark and Toro are Belgrade’s top three brands, volume-wise. The dealership is proudly a Scag Pro Gold Dealer, Exmark Turf Star Dealer, Echo Signature Elite Dealer and Honda Premier Dealer. 

Some of their commercial customers started their businesses when they purchased equipment from Belgrade Sales & Service, so they’ve gotten to grow their businesses together. “We know most people on a first name basis,” Britny said. “We have tons of customers who’ve been coming here for 30-plus years, even have second-generation customers.” 

With nearly 50 years in business, the Wyer-Guffey family has learned quite a bit. Their largest takeaway: flexibility. “You have to be adaptable to change,” Jason said. “To be a successful business today, you’ve got to be constantly moving forward and progressing.”