Rick and Julie Salvesen sell MID:COM and Midwest Meter after 40 years of ownership

Rick and Julie Salvesen see the founding and growth of MID:COM and Midwest Meter, Inc. as their “love story,” and the page of that story has been turned to the next chapter.

The Salvesens earlier this month announced the sale of Midwest Meter, Inc./MID:COM to North Dakota-based FEI, Inc. after more than 40 years of owning and operating the business. FEI, a customer of Midwest Meter’s, is a distributer of agricultural and propane related equipment.

Letting go of the business after four-plus decades of building relationships with employees and the community was difficult, but the Salvesens said that in the selling process, they found in FEI a company with similar values that will continue to push the MID:COM mission forward.

“Where our story of total appreciation of our employees, our family, ends, our little love story, the new chapter begins on the same plane and will just continue to grow and be perfect,” Julie said.

Julie said that to understand the significance of this chapter in their story, one must go back to the beginning, where Rick and Julie met as students at Iowa State University.

Chapter 1

As a senior at Iowa State, Rick was hand picked by Roger Camp to help develop the early prototype of what would eventually become the first Midwest Computer Register, or MID:COM.

The hopeful result of the project was to develop an accurate machine that would allow gas companies to compute an invoice, which Maury Vosberg had begun earlier.

When Vosburg needed assistance to move on with the project, he turned to Camp, who had just the student for the job.

“His next step was to go to Iowa State Extension service and they recommended he contact (Camp) to work on the project and at the time, I needed a special one-on-one course and I asked Dr. Camp what he had in mind,” Rick said, “and it was working on this project.”

Rick spent the rest of his collegiate career working to develop the register.

His research and development required late nights at the engineering building and visits from Julie, who provided moral support and dinners.

“When I say this is a love story, Rick and I had been dating for less than a year and so I would go to the electrical engineering building…and I would bring dinner because they would be working after class hours,” she said. “I would kind of hang out and they taught me how to solder and do stuff like that.”

As graduation approached in the spring of 1976, Rick and Camp had developed a prototype, which Rick had tested on the LP truck at the Ellsworth Coop. Rick also had with him an offer to join Liquid Controls as an engineer, but Rick and his supporting team had faith that the prototype could be developed and change the industry.

“He could’ve accepted that and made a lot of money, but he would have been 1 of 100 engineers, instead he wanted to be the one engineer in the company,” said Julie. “(Maury) offered him a job to continue working on the prototype and test it and push it along further because Maury thought this was something that could eventually be marketable and the first of its kind.”

Rick spent the next few months following graduation working on the prototype in a makeshift shop in the basement of his Ames rental home before moving his research to Vosburg’s property at the lumberyard on First Street Northwest in Hampton in 1977.

Finally, in 1977, the first model, the 6500, went into production. The 6501 soon followed and MID:COM was on its way. Rick continued operation out of Vosburg’s business on First Street NW before the operation moved to its current location on Highway 65 in 1989.

“It’s just evolved into this beautiful company,” said Julie.

Rick and Vosburg’s son, Ted, bought the company from Vosburg in 2004 and Rick purchased the business from Ted in 2012. Julie in 2012, for the first time, joined the company as an employee, working in human resources.

Chapter 2

The new chapter the Salveson’s recently entered began its rough draft in 2017, when Rick and Julie started discussing their exit plan.

The two knew they wanted to sell the businesses but with the plan that they sell both MID:COM and Midwest Meter to the same buyer. That goal proved to be more difficult than expected.

“Nobody wanted to keep it here, nobody wanted the employees, they basically just wanted one or the other,” Julie said. “The legacy we wanted to leave Hampton was not one to line our pockets with coin and take off. Twenty-one families would be affected if we just sold it out, closed the doors and sold off all the property and that’s not what we wanted to leave.”

“It was very important for us…we think very highly of our employees, we think of them as family and we treat them as family,” added Rick. “It was important to find a buyer who was on board with that.”

In January of 2020, the Salvesons finally received the right offer from the right company in FEI. Rick and Julie recognized that FEI has taken a similar path as MID:COM to get to its current standing as one of the nation’s prominent faces in equipment and propane distribution.

Christi Fliflet, President and CEO of FEI, said the company was founded in 1978, selling fertilizer parts and equipment before purchasing a propane distributor in 1987.

After the original founder retired in 2006, FEI employees formed an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), which means the business became 100 percent employee owned.

“It was basically what Rick and Julie found, that people wanted to break up the company and no one wanted both fertilizer and propane,” she said. “That’s not what he wanted for the company, so we formed an ESOP so all the employees are the beneficial owners of the company.”

The story of FEI’s founding and its subsequent focus on its employees are what appealed to Rick and Julie and soon, a deal was reached.

“They were us,” Julie said. “The people that came from FEI, their story was just like ours…the more we talked to them, the more it was like talking to younger versions of Rick and me.”

When Rick and Julie announced the sale earlier in the month, they made it a point to make sure current employees had the chance to meet the FEI leadership team. Any apprehensions of working under new ownership, she said, quickly disappeared.

Fliflet said that FEI recognized that along with new ownership could come anxiety, so their mission from the start was to emphasize the importance of each employee and ensure them that their value would not diminish despite the change in ownership.

“We understood the anxiety they may be feeling, so we met with each person individually and just told them to keep doing what they’re doing and that they’re all needed,” she said. “

Chapter 3

The sale became final on October 16 and Fliflet said the week after was spent working to learn the environment and mission of the company in order to effectively reach the employees while moving forward with FEI’s own goals for the business.

“Our theme was ‘understanding,’” she said. “We need to learn so we can help support them and understand where there might be issues, opportunities and all those things and that’s been our big thing this week and it will continue to be.”

Fliflet said one reason FEI pursued MID:COM and Midwest Meter because of its involvement in the petroleum industry, which their leadership felt would compliment FEI’s existing offerings.

“It’s a nice compliment to what we do while also expanding what we do, not only for our footprint, but they’re more of the petroleum side and we’re looking forward to getting more into the petroleum market,” she said. “They have a great company here with a ton of knowledge with the people that work here and we want them to continue to do what they’re doing.”

Another factor that figured heavily into FEI’s acquisition of the company was its reputation and focus on the employees not only as individuals, but a family as a whole.

“They have a very good reputation with their employees and their customer base and we strive to do the same because that really resonated with us,” she said.

The Salvesons said they’re confident that FEI’s leadership will help carry on the reputation that Rick, Julie and all who have played a part in MID:COM’s history have strived to build while also advancing the company into the future.

Rick will stay on with MID:COM and serve as a consultant as FEI learns the ropes of the company but even after Rick calls it a career, the Salvesons have nothing but gratitude for the company that stepped in to insure their legacy continues.

“It’s so heartwarming to know that FEI is the continuation of what Rick built, not the end of the story,” Julie said.