Joe Joy, for all practical purposes, was responsible for the commercial application of mechanical loading in the bituminous coal mines. In 1922, his invention, the Joy Loader, brought coal operators more tons per miner, gave the miners more income per hours worked, and provided the consumer with reduced fuel costs.
At age 12, Joy went to work as a slate picker at a coalmine tipple near his native Cumberland, Maryland. At 15, he was working underground as a face miner, using a pick to dig a kerf (a slot near the bottom of a coal seam). He would drill the face with a hand-held auger, charge the holes with dynamite, shoot down the coal, and hand-load it into small rail-mounted cars, pulled by a mule to the outside. Joy visualized a way of doing the work mechanically.
In 1903, Joe made a sketch of a digging and loading device. At the time, he was taking a mail-order course in mechanical engineering. By 1913, he had developed a gathering arm type loader, but no one was interested.
Not one to be rebuffed, he finally convinced Pittsburgh Coal Company in 1916 to use a machine similar to today’s loaders. However, much development and testing underground needed to be done.
Joy was awarded a patent on his machine in 1919 and realized the only way to success was to form his own company. Joy Machine Company was organized in that year. The first crawler-mounted self-loading shuttle car was finished for Coal Run Mining Co. at Indiana, Pennsylvania in 1921.
Many of the miners felt Joy’s loader would cost them their jobs. Joe went into the mines himself to ask the miners how his equipment could be improved. Once they saw he was interested in improving their working conditions, they cooperated with him. His first loader machine of his own design sold for $2,800 in 1922. An assembly plant was organized in Evansville, Indiana and later moved to Franklin, Pennsylvania.
He was continually confronted with legal challenges to his patents (he held over 190), financial constraints, foreign competition, and strikes in the coalfields. Yet his many contributions to mechanization in the coal mines were rewarded with a silver scroll in 1940 from the National Association of Manufacturers. More than $100 million worth of mining machines were made and marketed under his patents by Joy Manufacturing Company, now Joy Technologies, Inc.
