moorhead business news 

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Construction has begun on the new Les Schwab Tire Center in front of the Moorhead Menard’s store. It’s expected to open in Summer 2024. (Photo/Nancy Hanson.)

Les Schwab Tire Centers, a national company with 520 stores, is planning to build its 521st in Moorhead in coming months.

To be located in front of Menard’s just north of Interstate 94, the tire center is expected to open by the early summer of 2024, according to chief marketing officer Dale Thompson. Ground-breaking, he said, will depend on the weather this fall.

The Schwab chain of stores began in 1952, when its namesake opened his first location with one employee in his home town of Prineville, Oregon. Today the corporation is a Fortune 500 company with well over a billion dollars in annual sales. Its stores are located in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Calirofrnia, Nevada, Utah and Alaska. Its corporate headquarters are in Bend, Oregon.

The new Moorhead store will mark the firm’s entry into the Upper Midwest. Thompson said more locations are planned throughout Minnesota and the Dakotas.

The Schwab center will have six interior bays, plus an outdoor canopy to accommodate semi trucks and large tractors. It handles the whole spectrum of tires and related services, from retail customers to corporate and agricultural clients. “Winter, summer, ATVs, wheelbarrows … our stores handle them all,” he added.

“We don’t do engine work. Instead, Les Schwab stores handle the whole under-car system of interrelated services,” the company representative continued. Among those services: Braks, shocks, alignment, snow chains, batteries, wiper blades and other accessories. Most stores also provide oil changes.

He said Moorhead was selected as a prime location because of the extensive agriculture in the area. “Our most successful stores are in areas like Moorhead – great city, great location next to major highways, but also a lot of farming around it.”