VRT -
VANCE RIVER TERMINAL

OUR HISTORY

GRANDFATHER, GEORGE D JOHNSON

1950's to 1967

I never met the man, but I always felt he guided me over the years.  He was legendary; tough but would give you the shirt off his back.  Only had a fifth-grade education but was a certified welder and highly ingenious.  He formed Vance Coal Co by the late 50's naming it after his foreman Vance Sinclair.  Reportedly after winning rights to nearby coal seam tract in a poker game, he started deep mining the coal.  So successful, he laid down rail tracks out of the mine whereby a mule could pull cars of mined coal into a 300-ton hopper he constructed.  Trucks would back underneath, be loaded, and then deliver the coal.  Eventually, he obtained an old wooden tipple on the river and began to load barges.  Unfortunately, he died prematurely at the age of 54.

MY FATHER, DARWIN F. JOHNSON

1967-1990's

Abruptly thrust upon him in 1967, Darwin took up the reins of Vance Coal Co.  Soon to graduate law school, tasked with burying his father, not to mention his first-born son due within the week...somehow, he juggled these responsibilities and kept the plates spinning.  In the 1970's we witnessed a massive coal boom and by 1971 me and my two brothers had come into the world.  Surely there was much chaos under our tin roofed farmhouse.  Consol was our primary customer for getting coal from road to river or rail.  A tugboat rammed the docks and collapsed the wooden tipple.  In response he purchased a steel structure of a downriver tipple owned by local coal maverick Billy Dipple and had it re-erected at the Vance site.  Darwin ran Vance well into the 1990's.

AARON VAUGHN JOHNSON

1990's to Present

It has been my passion to redesign and rebuild from the riverbed upward, the new VRT facility.  The naysayers were many over the last three decades, but we conceived a vision, persevered, and created a highly capable and diverse facility.  Where the majority of docks in the area were shuttered over the years, VRT has grown into a state-of-the-art facility and has defied the odds, consistently outperforming even the "big docks".  We have become the premier port of Morgantown.