MOUNTAIN STATES ANALYTICAL, INC.
In the early 1990s Std Labs had set up a partnership with Earl Hess of Lancaster Laboratories, Inc of Pennsylvania, a long time, respected associate with Troy and Gladys in The American Counsel of Independent Laboratories. This partnership was formed to establish an environmental laboratory to be located in Salt Lake City, Utah under the initial management of Ray Sims. Ray had become available as the Std Labs had lost its contract with Utah Power and Light for a coal testing lab in Huntington, Utah for its mining operations.
The name of this new venture was Mountain States Analytical, Inc. and it was to give Std Labs some real technical capability in the environmental testing space. Lancaster Labs was nationally known for quality work and Earl’s reputation was stellar.
After acquiring a facility and some state of the art equipment the new business opened its doors. The enterprise grew slowly the first year and did not meet the partners expectations. A new manager in Doug Later was hired to bring more managerial talent to the effort and some slow positive growth was experienced in the second year. Nevertheless, Troy felt that this was not a good investment for Std Labs and let Hess buy out the Std Labs’ shares in the late 1990s.