MPR Transloading Supply Chain Solutions CEO Dave Humphreys, left, and his daughter, company President Natalie Brown look forward to continuing to grow the business.

BELLAIRE — MPR Transloading Supply Chain Solutions is a family business that is a riverfront transloading facility located in Bellaire.

Formed in 2009 by Rick Frio who contacted his longtime friend Dave Humphreys to help with some logistic issues. Following Humphreys’ help Frio and he ended up becoming partners which made Humphreys the CEO.

After the partnership became successful Frio asked if Humphreys’ daughter Natalie Brown would want to work for the company as well. Brown started working for the company in 2011.

Humphreys said that Frio approached him about seeing if he’d be interested in potentially buying him out of the business. In 2018, Brown and her husband Vice President of Operations Justin Brown bought out Frio’s 50% of the company making her the President of the company.

Brown is a lifelong Ohio Valley resident who graduated the University of Cincinnati with a mechanical engineering degree.

Humphreys, originally from the greater Pittsburgh area, worked in the coal industry for several years before partnering with Frio.

The family business is a transportation company which moves products from one mode of transportation to another.

“We unload barges from the river. We have specifically two customers that we service, day in and day out. The one barges wire rod coils from Belmont, Texas to our area. We then receive them, we store them inside and outside,” Brown said. “We warehouse them, and then they are shipped either to their next processors or to their end customers. And we handle all of the trucking transportation as well.

“We also have barges that come up from Missouri, and they are barges of frac sand. We unload the frac sand and warehouse it. We have a joint venture called NPR sand terminals that warehouses it and then reloads it onto the frac trucks you see everywhere the frack sand trucks.”

She added that the joint venture is a joint operation between MPR and a Missouri based company called Capital Sand Province.

Brown said that the company also has a truck brokerage that handles freight all over the United States.

“Last year was a new record for us,” she said. “We had moved freight into Hawaii and moved freight into Alaska, so we’ve moved it through all 50 states, and now do that on a regular basis.

The company currently has 42 employees, which Brown said are friends and family of other coworkers.

“When I moved to the valley in 1977, things were booming. It’s sad to see people’s kids graduate from college or high school and have to go somewhere else to work,” Humphreys said. “We take pride in the number of people we employ and provide livable wages and steady work for a lot of families.”

Brown added that it’s comforting to know that the employees entrust employment of their family and friends with her family.

“We’re very proud of that, and we hope that that continues to grow,” she said.

Despite being the CEO, Humphreys said that he’s old enough that he could have retired a long time ago.

“They [Natalie and Justin] really run the operation,” he said. “They do a great job, and if I didn’t come up here, maybe it would run better. Who knows? But they’ve done a good job. I just enjoy being around and seeing what’s going on.”

Brown said that the Belmont County Board of Commissioners and Port Authority have been a huge help in working alongside JobsOhio, Appalachian Growth Capital and the Belmont County Community Improvement Corporation.

She added that those organizations have played a pivotal role in MPR applying for a Maritime Administration Grant – $12 million grant to enhance the infrastructure for the business’ southern facility.

Brown said that the family should know by the end of February if the grant has been secured or not.

“One thing about our business is that everything we do is extremely costly infrastructure, machines, and equipment, and we like to have new equipment because it’s more fuel efficient, they’re bigger, better, and have longer reaches,” Brown said. “So it’s important to us to stay up to date and have our operators use nice, new, efficient equipment.

“For instance, a material handler that we use to unload the barges alone is $1.5 million so there’s significant investments. But it’s neat, because it’s a ripple effect, whatever we purchase, whatever we do here, reaches the entire community.”

She added that she wanted to continue to grow and expand the business’ workforce, so it can continue to hire more employees.