LOVELAND — A Loveland limousine company that a restaurateur launched “to give guests a treat” is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month – more than 10 years after the restaurant closed.
Summit Limousines owner Kim Galloway said her late husband, Tim Galloway, was co-owner of the Summit Restaurant at 3208 W. Eisenhower Blvd. when he and his partner started Summit Limousines in June 1992.
“We bought a small six-passenger to give guests a treat, and it just grew from there,” Galloway said. That first limo, a 1984 Cadillac stretch, was white with brown velour interior, she said.
The restaurant closed a month after 9/11, but the limo company grew, she said.
Her husband, who died of cancer last November at age 55, had taken a job as a Frontier Airlines flight attendant, so she came on full-time as office manager in 2006.
The old white Caddy is gone, but Summit now has a fleet of 12, including sedans, an executive van, SUV limos, stretch Lincoln limos and a Hummer stretch limo.
The company employs 11 drivers, seven of whom are full-time, and a part-time office worker.
“Seventy-five percent of the business is our corporate clientele,” Galloway said. “On any given Monday, we’ll have 26 trips to the airport in sedans.”
Although the company felt a dip during the recession, it still did well because companies continued to use Summit’s services, she said. High-level company officials’ time became more valuable, she said, so they would use their time in the back of the sedan on the way to the airport to conduct business.
Summit also drives people for special occasions such as weddings and concerts. “We do sporting packages – Cheyenne Frontier Days is always huge, and the Greeley Stampede, things like that.”
“We just try to do what we do really well, and we get a lot of repeat business and referrals, and the company just grows and grows and grows.”
For more information, call 669-9049 or go to summitlimousine.com.
Craig Young can be reached at 635-3634 or cyoung@reporter-herald.com. Follow him on Twitter, @CraigYoungRH.
