Celebrating 60 Years

Lowell is officially 60 years old in 2024. We are excited to share opportunities for you to enjoy some of our celebrations this year along with great memories of the past as we look back on our success.

One of the early stories of Lowell dates back to David Lilja and Lowell Thorud starting Lowell, Inc in 1964. They’d met at Reuters Manufacturing in Hopkins, Minnesota. Reuters was one of the leading machine shops of its day and many local companies can point to an ex-Reuters employee in their roots.

At Reuters, Dave was running a grinding machine while Lowell worked as a machinist in another area of the shop. One day after work, Dave approached Lowell and said, “if I had two nickels, I’d start my own shop.” Lowell reached into his pocket, gave Dave two nickels and after deciding which of their first or last names sounded better as a company name, Lowell, Inc. was born.

They located their first shop in St. Louis Park, Minnesota and their first hire was Helen Prouty who managed the office. Dave managed most of the customer duties while Lowell ran the shop. Dave and Lowell were always completely customer focused and their early partners were some of the leading technology companies of the day. Sperry Univac, Honeywell, Control Data and its 40MB hard disk drive, were among the first customers.

Lowell Inc. continued to grow along with its customers and expanded from the computer industry to defense and aerospace. Now Lowell is entirely focused on the medical device industry. But one thing hasn’t changed, that 100 percent devotion to customer service and quality that started with Dave Lilja, Lowell Thorud and two nickels.