In 1884, Joseph Francis Joy was 12 years old and starting work at a coalmine in Maryland, USA. As he got older, he started teaching himself mechanical engineering by a mail-order course, and experimenting with ideas for coalmining machinery. This early start in mining would lead to Joseph creating Joy Mining Machinery, a company that is now a global leader in underground high-productivity mining more than 100 years later.
Today, Joy Global produces underground and surface mining machinery and systems, supplying many countries worldwide through a direct service model. Jason Savage is the president of the Australasian branch of Joy Global, which originated in the 1950s. Jason has worked for Joy for his entire career. I started with Joy in South Africa when I was pretty young and worked in the electrical engineering environment studying and working in parallel until I earned my masters degree, Jason says.