Robert Slagel: Founder & CEO of Portable Solutions Group

Elizabeth Slagel


    When my assignment came in to write about this issue’s “Determined Entrepreneur,” I considered it to be a conflict as I’m married to the subject, Robert Slagel. But, after reading a number of articles about my husband’s endeavors, I knew someone from the inside could better capture the humble beginnings and spirit of this enterprising man.  

 Robert’s story, before me, was a middle child who grew up in a home with a strong work ethic, practicality and a dad whose motto was “If you watch your pennies, you don’t have to worry about your dollars.” At 18, Robert didn’t take life all too seriously until a near death boating accident ripped away some of his leg and some of his cavalier attitude. He started at Morehead University, transferred to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and nearly flunked out. He got grounded and completed a geology degree and then some years later a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Idaho.

    By the time I met him in his early 30s, he was ridiculously fit, handsome, and itching to make something big happen in his life. He had a secure government job, but on our first date, he revealed he really wanted to follow his grandfather’s path and start a business. Two years later, he would launch a fairly new concept of using shipping containers as portable storage. The idea blended well with his dad’s existing portable toilet company, Johnny on the Spot, (JOTS). On a shoestring budget, he gambled on six shipping containers, using local tow companies for on-site delivery.

    “I wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into. It took six months to rent those first six boxes,” he recalled. Meanwhile, he was hanging on to his day job to pay the bills and support a young family, but that wouldn’t last as his superiors were well aware of his divided attention and on-the-job temptation to promote his side business.

    One bleak morning he was called in and fired.

    Like the boating accident, it was a turning point. With no salary, a new concept hardly generating capital and the many new challenges of getting off the ground, it would seem the odds were against him. Then a vicious fire broke out and destroyed much property and one of the two buildings housing both the storage and portable toilet businesses.

     Robert simply outworked his competitors, building relationships with his customers, a trait entirely natural for him. He grew that fleet of Storage on the Spot containers from six to 600 and spun off two more companies. Unbeknownst to most, Portable Solutions Group (PSG), the umbrella company, is considered to be a premier leader in shipping container modification worldwide, doing all engineering/design and manufacturing in-house and right here in the Ohio Valley.

    To back up a bit and explain how we went from a simple product based rental company to a container modification company, rewind to 2004. He received a request to create a concept for access control, which would meet new homeland security guidelines post 9-11. His idea was to weld turnstiles inside shipping containers to control access in between gates at Ashland’s Marathon Refinery. After much research and design, a prototype was developed. It worked perfectly, the demand grew and so did the need to protect its unique design. In 2009, Robert was awarded a U.S. patent, five years after applying for the intellectual property rights for the Modular Access Control, or MAC as it is called.

    Today, Robert has 43 patents in 36 countries for the company’s unique designs involving shipping containers, mostly the MAC and, new to the fleet, Vehicle Access Control (VAC), which uses solar panels to power vehicle access control modules. If it can be built in a container and is profitable, PSG does it.

    The company builds containers to store energy at windmill and solar sites. They build containers that stack at port security sites scanning for dirty bombs. They built battery-powered backups in containers for the village of Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. They have even been approached to build hydroponic marijuana growing stations in Colorado. MAC portals can be found on the World Trade Center site, JFK and Laguardia airport terminal expansions, Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, and Google and Facebook data centers across the country. In essence, PSG products can be found on six continents - only missing an opportunity for building living quarters in Antarctica for drilling into the polar ice caps for climate change studies.

    When meeting new people, there’s always the question of “What do you do for a living?”

    Robert simply replies, “I’m an entrepreneur.”

    Knowing him best, I’d say it’s his romantic way of saying, “I’m a dreamer and a doer.”

    PSG may be his brainchild, but it would not be possible without a skilled and committed team. Robert has recruited some of what he calls “the best local talent” to help him with sales and marketing, accounting, managing, and engineering. “PSG has been fortunate that there are a lot of talented professionals who have been forced to move away from home and work elsewhere, but are interested in coming back home,” he says. He has also expanded his sales offices to Louisiana and Houston, Texas, and will likely look at a European presence in the near future.

    In July of 2016, he celebrated his 100-employee milestone. Since then, Robert has opened another plant in Wurtland, Kentucky, and will likely tout over 200 employees by the end of July. As his number of employees steadily rises, so does his sense of pride that he’s doing it all right here in the Ohio Valley.

    “I feel like my job as the owner and CEO is to make sure the companies are profitable, but what many don’t realize is profit isn’t for my personal monetary gain. I see profit as fuel for growing and creating more jobs to our area,” he concluded.