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Monte black legend spirit6/14/2023 All three – Jared, Kristen and Adam – now work with their dad. He’d tell stories about doing jobs and what part of the country he was in, where he traveled to.”Īs each of his children got old enough, Black would have them travel with him. “I remember him leaving early in the morning,” said his son Jared Black, a 2004 graduate of Ohio University, and now the company president, “getting in a pickup and coming home from a long day at work, dirty, late at night, being in a great mood, having fun, loving the work. The company initially started in Baltimore, Ohio, by the way, but as it grew, Black said, “We moved to Hebron to be closer to I-70 so we could service the towns surrounding Columbus as effectively as possible.”Īlong the way he also changed the company’s name to MPW Industrial Services, the MPW standing for Mobile Power Wash. “I built that truck up to fit the work I was doing, then every six months for the next four years or so I bought a new truck for my business.” “I believe the truck had belonged to the Sam Alban Furniture Store, which was in Newark,” he recalled. Its purpose was to carry power-washing equipment. In 1972 Black obtained a $7,000 loan to buy a used “box” truck from the now defunct Bowman Chevrolet in Hebron. The year was 1972.īut to conduct business, first he needed a truck. It was initially called Central Ohio Mobile Power Wash. He told me the ins and outs of the business.”īlack, then 21, came back to central Ohio to start a one-man business to clean the outside of buildings in downtown Columbus and wash vehicles for companies that had truck fleets. “When I was in basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio,” he said, “I met a man named Tom Wright, who was in the truck-washing business in Ashland, Kentucky. It was in the Air Force he got the idea for the company. Monte Black grew up in Lancaster, where he went to Fairfield Union High School, then Ohio University before joining the Air Force. “And we’re just getting started,” he added. And it all stems from Black’s one-man, one-truck operation 44 years ago. It will help Black and his staff oversee the company’s 3,000 employees and almost 2,000 trucks over 72 locations across the U.S. Ever since, the company has apparently been growing.Įvidence of that is the current construction of the 75,000-square-foot addition to the corporate headquarters in Hebron. But in 2006, the last year it was traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, annual sales were reportedly just under $110 million. and Canada hire MPW, in very simple terms, to clean and maintain their buildings and purify their water, among other things.Ĭurrent sales figures are unknown since the company is privately held. In other words, companies all over the U.S. MPW Industrial Services is the leading provider of technology-based industrial cleaning, facility management, water purification and container management services in North America. And as a consequence he can say of his company, “We’ve come a long way in 44 years.” That’s a modest understatement. They’re among the traits that have served him well. As the founder, chairman and CEO of MPW Industrial Services in Hebron, he has a reputation as a man who doesn’t use a lot of words when a few will do (and always returns phone calls), who doesn’t hesitate to hop in one of his corporate jets to conduct business wherever it may be, and who is ultimately confident and positive, which was underscored by the fact when asked his age he replied, “I’m 65 years young.”
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