Over the last 6 months, I had the pleasure and honor of getting to know Bob Mazer through interviews for both the 2025 Farm Equipment Dealer Hall of Fame (HOF) and the 2025 Dealership of the Year. Sadly, Bob died this past weekend after a “short but courageous battle with cancer,” Mazergroup CFO Wally Butler said.
Bob exemplified both what it is to be a HOFer and a Dealership of the Year. You could say he lived and breathed the business. When I interviewed him back in January for the Hall of Fame, he told me, “My heart has always been in agriculture and farming, and I didn’t want to leave the farm. And so my complete being wasn’t very focused on school, it was focused on how I was going to get out of school to go farming.”
While he may not have been very focused on school, Bob’s career shows he was an astute businessman and someone who was going to both learn from and teach a thing or two to his peers. He joined the family business in 1968 when he was 18 years old. And since then he and his team grew the business his dad started into the largest New Holland dealership group in North America with 18 stores in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Bob’s good friend Doug Harvey, president and CEO of DLH Group and valued external advisor to the Mazergroup, compared Bob to the Tasmanian Devil. “If you’ve seen the Tasmanian Devil, then you’ve seen Bob,” he said.
“Bob is driven. He doesn’t suffer fools lightly. He wants success,” Harvey says. “He’s built a great team of executives, and yet, the farm equipment business, being in rural America, rural Canada, you don’t have that pomp and ceremony, but he’s brought in a great HR VP that’s put the people processes in place. He does a leadership training program that I got him onto, that we’ve used. He’s taken his business from a mom-and-pop, from working with his dad, one dealership, without a formal education, and he’s done it on drive, determination and doing things like his board, which has created transparency amongst all his shareholders, and has taken outside ... and it hasn’t always been easy, believe me.”
“His leadership has set the bar for what a modern equipment dealership and community leader can achieve…”
Tom Kennedy, the former president of New Holland Ag and one of Mazergroup’s outside advisors, said in an interview in January for the HOF that Bob has “that innate leadership ability to make you feel comfortable, but he also has the ability to be critical.”
Based on my interactions with Bob, I agree with Kennedy’s assessment. From my first interview with Bob, he managed to make me feel like we were old friends. He told me that he always wanted to have a good, solid relationship with his suppliers. “I never fight with my supplier unless they’ve done something really stupid to us,” he said during our early June interview for the Dealership of the Year. “We’ve always been a company that says, ‘It’s only good if we’ve got a good relationship.’”
Bob was a staple in Canadian agriculture and the New Holland dealer network, and his absence will surely be missed. But, he built a business and a team to be proud of, and I have no doubt Mazergroup is in good hands and will continue to grow and improve as planned.
John Schmeiser, COO of Vi by visorPRO and former president and COO of the North American Equipment Dealers Assn., says Bob will be remembered “as one of the most respected and forward thinking equipment dealers in the agricultural equipment industry.”
He goes on to say:
"He transformed Mazergroup from a regional dealership into one of the largest and most successfully privately owned equipment dealership groups in Canada.
"He’s known throughout the industry for his deep integrity, his strategic acumen and his ability to navigate the rapidly changing agricultural equipment landscape.
"He embraced new technologies and forward thinking approaches while maintaining the core values that defined Mazergroups’ success.
"Not only was he a successful equipment dealership, his other business ventures were impressive. Additionally, how he gave back to the community with donations and support is an inspiration for all. His leadership has set the bar for what a modern equipment dealership and community leader can achieve."
When I was at Mazergroup's Brandon, Man., store back in June, Bob told me, “I don’t think there’s any doubt I’m winding down. I’ll stay in the business as long as I can, as long as they’ll let me come into the office…”
I think it goes without saying, we all wish for just one more day, Bob.