Shell overcomes personal, business river challenges

The Arkansas River runs in one direction through the Fort Smith metro but has created circles in the life of Five Rivers Distribution President Marty Shell, who manages a port and logistics enterprise based in Van Buren.

Shell lost his father, Buck, to cancer in December 2010, just a few months after being named to the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 2010 Forty Under 40 class. His father began the port business that Shell would have to carry earlier than he wanted. He said that episode is still his biggest personal challenge since 2010.

“I lost my father that year,” Shell said. “You know, maybe you wouldn’t call it a challenge, but every day that I got to work with him my goal was to make him proud. And now every day, for these 14 years … I think the challenge is to just keep making my daddy proud of me.”

The business challenges have come in waves. The federal government implemented broad steel tariffs in 2017 in what was branded as an effort to curb Chinese steel imports.

“That really took the river business down,” Shell said.

As river operators began to absorb steel tariff losses, an historic flood in early 2019 effectively closed all river traffic for months. And as the river traffic began to recover from the 2019 floods, COVID hit in early 2020. Again, commerce on the river slowed. And as COVID receded, “it was hell trying to find people to come back to work on the river,” Shell said.

“All those things that you think will happen just once in a lifetime, happened back-to-back-to-back-to-back. And so, I guess if there is anything good in there, it’s that you’re just used to whatever happens next. You just don’t give up when life throws you those curve balls. You just have to roll with it.”

The 2019 flood proved to have a bright side. The Port of Fort Smith, which Shell’s father helped build in 1969-1970 and which Five Rivers manages, would have to be rebuilt in 2019-2020.

“There I was, 50 years later, 50 years after dad built it, I would tear it down and rebuild it,” Shell said. “It was hard to see those things come down, you know, that he built, but that’s what pictures are for.”

Shell is also proud of working with the City of Fort Smith to rebuild the port.

“That facility was 50 years old in 2019, and now the Port of Fort Smith is completely rebuilt. It was rebuilt with FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and insurance money and didn’t cost the city a dime,” he said.

Five Rivers now employs 17 people and has around 10 trucks a day take product out of the Port of Fort Smith, and up to 100 trucks a day deliver out of the Van Buren port. The company has customers in 17 states, with steel, fertilizer and animal feed being some of the more common products stored at the Van Buren and Fort Smith warehouses.

Business practices also have changed in the past 14 years. For example, Shell noted, a packing list and clipboard to track inventory is now done with barcodes and computers, with all the data stored for easy retrieval and management.

“Just about everything here is digitized,” he said. “You can’t even work on equipment with just a wrench, because you’ll need a laptop. That shade tree mechanic is no more. Those days are largely gone.”

Shell also said he was surprised by how much his Forty Under 40 recognition meant to him and how fondly he still remembers it.

“That was a really great experience for me,” he said. “I’ve never really liked stuff like that, but it got me out of my comfort zone, especially during a time when I was dealing with my dad’s health. But I got to meet a lot of people from those businesses up there [in Northwest Arkansas]. And you know, we put down our phones, and talked and got to know about each other. I would recommend that experience to anyone.”