Bryan Force

Biography

The Indiana County Chamber of Commerce welcomes Bryan Force to the Business Hall of Fame, Class of 2024.

A member of the Chamber of Commerce board of directors since 2020, Bryan Force followed a short path from education to entrepreneurship. He quickly developed a series of enterprises that have been responsive to Indiana County’s industrial, environmental, and athletic needs.

On his 18th birthday, Force passed the Pennsylvania commercial drivers license test and started work as a water tank truck driver for an area natural gas well servicing company.

By age 19, he laid out a business plan and gained bank financing for his own gas and oil well service company, Force Inc., in Creekside, and bought his own water tank truck.

Following market trends, Force invested in more sophisticated and heavier equipment in 2006 and 2007 to capitalize on the drilling boom in the local Marcellus shale formation. And in Barnesville, Ohio, Force developed a branch yard to serve explorers and drillers in the Utica shale area.

It its first 10 years, Force Inc., grew from a single employee and one truck to more than 130 employees and more than 100 commercial trucks, excavators, bulldozers, and asphalt paving equipment. The company’s annual revenue vaulted to $5 million in just five years, $15 million after a decade, and more than $50 million by 2019 when Force divested the oil and gas division of the company.

The first employees were Bryan’s mother, Susan, as bookkeeper; his brother Chris as a laborer and driver (now general manager of northeast operations); and his father, David, who oversaw the fabricating shop after he retired from the Homer City power plant.. Various divisions of the company provided excavating and paving services, equipment rentals, temporary on-site housing units for workers, water transfer equipment and roustabout labor to the oil and gas industry.

Force was just 30 years old when “Equipment World” magazine, a leading construction industry trade publication, recognized his strong work ethic and his companies’ expansion and growth, and named Force Incorporated the “Contractor of The Year” in 2011. Among his keys to growth and success, he told the magazine, were to hire inexperienced but eager workers and train them to fit the company’s needs, promote to supervisors those workers with potential to start their own businesses, and to make safety standards and practices a top priority.

In an interview archived at the “Equipment World” website, Force said: “I would say the most important thing to do is just have a good hard work ethic and be honest with the customers, be honest with your employees the whole way through and work as hard as you possibly can to make your product or your job as good as it possibly could be.”

With a knack for seeing the drilling industry trends, Force began diversifying his ventures before the Marcellus drilling and service sectors softened.

In 2005, Force started the Turbo Taxi ride service in Indiana. He began with a modest fleet of vehicles and marketed the ride service to senior citizens and people enjoying the night life in downtown Indiana, the IUP campus, and surrounding communities. The company employed 20 people.

A year later, he put a luxury stretch car on the road for rent in his Midnight Limousine LLC service.

In 2010, he acquired a chemical company that manufactures a dust suppressant sprayed on gravel roads by large distributor trucks. This company, Environmental Energy Solutions, services public and private sectors in several states. Force also operates an aggregate quarrying business and owns East American Motorsports, a Polaris dealership, near Punxsutawney.

An affinity for youth sports and athletics has driven Force’s most recent ventures. Active in football, wrestling and baseball at Marion Center High School, Force founded the Bullpen Sports Club, a year-round baseball and softball training facility in Indiana County Commerce Park. He also devotes much of his time to Indiana’s Little League baseball program.

In 2018, he formed Force Turf Solutions, a company that constructs new baseball, football and soccer fields, and installs and replaces artificial turf playing surfaces for ballparks, fields, and stadiums in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland.

In recognition of his advocacy for young athletes, Force was a special inductee to the Indiana County Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. The hall honored his contributions to the Indiana Little League baseball program.

Today, having divested the water hauling, water disposal and equipment rental divisions, Force’s flagship business, East American Incorporated, continues the construction, excavation, and paving divisions Force has owned more than 20 years.

The Chamber of Commerce now proudly welcomes Bryan Force as a member of the Class of 2024 of the Indiana County Business Hall of Fame.