Dallas Dort – carriage leader, Durant supporter
One key to Durant's success was Josiah Dallas Dort, carriage firm co-founder and also headquartered at the Durant-Dort building. He handled the firm’s day-to-day operations, served as a Flint civic leader and, most significantly, helped build on Durant’s major projects, such as promoting the Buick automobile and creating General Motors.
Dort called his partner "easily the firm’s leading force and genius." Later, when Durant promoted Buick across the country, using his carriage sales outlets to promote and sell Buicks, Dallas Dort was handling the details. When Durant urged Charles Stewart Mott in 1905 to move his axle company from Utica, N.Y., to serve Buick in Flint, he asked Mott to reply to the Durant-Dort office in Flint, where Dort opened the mail. It wasn’t long before Mott picked up his whole business and moved it to Flint, building a large factory adjacent to a new Buick assembly complex on Flint’s north side. Mott, who lived to age 97, would become GM's chief of staff, a GM director for 60 years, thrice mayor of Flint and founder of the Mott Foundation, which provided millions of dollars in charity.