Every dealer has a story to tell. Unfortunately most dealers have left this earth by now taking a lot of valuable information with them. The Doyle Potts dealership is one of those. All that remain are pictures and family members who are now regaining their interest in the family roots. Unfortunately not much is known about this particular dealership but sometimes a story is the best way to get information.

Here is what we do know. Doyle Potts (born 1905) and his parents (James D & Adella Potts) along with his grandparents (William Edgar & Mandana Richardson) homesteaded in the Ingomar, Montana area in 1912. They farmed the land, which was very poor ground. The family barely got by. So Doyle, who was just eleven at the time, caught a freight train and headed to Iowa where they had relatives. He set out to get a job and work on the railroad. His parents had no idea where the youngster had gone but he was later found and brought back to Montana.

When Doyle was older, he opened up a garage in Custer, Montana. Speculation is that an Oliver salesman stopped in there and convinced Doyle to become an Oliver agent, as they were then called. This took place in 1932. Things were going pretty good and Doyle opened up a second dealership in 1940 in Hardin, Montana but this was short-lived. Around the same time, Doyle moved the dealership from Custer to Billings, Montana. Harold and Glen Potts, Doyle’s brothers, went to work beside him along with his brother-in-law, Jack Spek.

The Billings location was the dealership that put him on the map. It was here that he was located on a good road and had ample display room. He grew to become the largest volume dealer in the entire State of Montana. But on June 1, 1945 the building that he occupied was sold out from under him. He was left literally “on the street”. This was not good for Montana’s largest volume dealer.

To learn more about Doyle Potts read Magazine Issue #21