Joe Stianche sits in his office at Royal Trucking in West Point, Miss., peering intently at a cluster of AAA batteries in his hand and talking with a technician. A satellite receiver on a trailer has failed, and no one is sure about the recharging procedure for the batteries.
No issue – no matter how small – escapes his attention or fails to engage his imagination. No technician seeking knowledge is ever turned away. More often than not, a technician struggling with a thorny problem soon will find Stianche right there beside him, sleeves rolled up and grease under his fingernails, working with him to resolve the issue.
It’s that attitude and dedication to his profession that has earned Stianche recognition as Commercial Carrier Journal’s 2012 Career Leadership Award recipient.
‘The Gift’
Joe Stianche’s life and career are as all-American as it gets. His parents were immigrants: His father’s family arrived in America just before the First World War, while his Ukrainian-born mother escaped from famine and Stalin’s reign just before the second one began. Stianche himself was born in Allentown, Pa., where his grandfathers and uncles worked in and around the coalmines of Tamaqua and Lansford.
It was Stianche’s uncles, working in the explosives industry, who took their young nephew out to the mines in the hard coal region of Pennsylvania, where he became fascinated by mechanical systems on trucks and mining equipment – a passion that remains with him to this day. In his own words, Stianche had “The Gift.” Soon, there wasn’t a clock, a radio or even a TV in the house that wasn’t safe from the young boy who would take them apart to see what made them tick.
By the time Stianche was a teenager, his family had relocated to the Deep South – a region the young man fell in love with – and he became a “born-again southerner.” Education was highly prized in the Stianche home. As the eldest child, Stianche was expected to graduate from college. He eventually earned a degree from Georgia Tech.
