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Sunday February 14, 2010 City Editor: Joe Feeney jfeeney@hpe.com (336) 888-3537 Night City Editor: Chris McGaughey cmcgaughey@hpe.com (336) 888-3540
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Landing on time First top executive for FedEx hub settles into job BY PAUL B. JOHNSON ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
GREENSBORO – Joe Stephens’ path from his native Indiana to the Triad starts with a job he took as a teenage college student on the ramp of a FedEx Corp. cargo operation. Stephens, then a 19-year-old engineering major at Purdue University, landed an entry-level job at the FedEx operation in Indianapolis, now one of the company’s major hubs. “I started out as a ramp agent loading and launching airplanes
‘I was always fascinated with aircraft and the whole inner workings of the FedEx operations. It still impresses me 21 years later.’
Joe Stephens Age: 40 Professional: First managing director of air-ground and freight services for FedEx Express at the mid-Atlantic hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport. His geographic scope of responsibility includes the entire network of FedEx Express operations in Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, Columbia, S.C., GreenvilleSpartanburg, S.C., Norfolk, Va., Richmond, Va., and Roanoke, Va. Has more than 20 years of experience in the transportation industry, joining FedEx in 1989 as a ramp agent, loading and launching aircraft in Indianapolis. Education: Bachelor’s degree of science in electrical engineering from Purdue University.
Joe Stephens New FedEx Triad hub executive in the middle of the night,” said Stephens, a Plainfield, Ind., native who’s risen to become the top executive for FedEx at its cargo hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport. Twenty-one years after joining FedEx, Stephens has become the first managing director of airground freight services at the mid-Atlantic hub. He oversees an overnight sorting operation that was 11 years in the making. The hub opened June 1, becoming the linchpin for future economic development in the region. Stephens’ long connection to FedEx evolved as he took on more responsibilities. “I was always fascinated with aircraft and the whole inner workings of the FedEx operations. It still impresses me 21 years later. The fascination led me to want to become a true part of the FedEx team and make a career out of it,” he said during an interview in a
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DON DAVIS JR. | HPE
Honors: Stephens is a three-time recipient of the FedEx Five Star Award, the company’s highest honor for outstanding leadership and individual contribution.
Joe Stephens, managing director of the FedEx Corp. hub facility at Piedmont Triad International Airport. conference room at the FedEx complex. Stephens, 40, has managed operations across the United States for the Memphis-based overnight sorting conglomerate. He was part of an engineering team discussing a new overnight sorting operation on the East Coast when FedEx officials announced in April 1998 that the Triad had been picked for the company’s latest national cargo hub site. Stephens has ultimate responsibility for a FedEx operation that covers nearly 600,000 square feet on 168 acres. The company has 500 employees in the Triad, 200 at the hub at its outset, and maintains 5,400 truck routes and
DAVID HOLSTON | HPE FILE
FedEx Airbus A310 is loaded at Piedmont Triad International Airport in 2003 at the former small FedEx Corp. operation. Last June, FedEx opened its latest national hub at PTIA.
315 flight operations monthly in the region. When FedEx announced plans for the hub in the spring of 1998, the pledge was to have 1,500 fulland part-time workers on site at full capacity. So far hiring at the hub has been stifled by the recession. The pace of new hiring will be driven by business growth and new employers moving into the region, Stephens said. The local economic landscape, with the loss of longtime textile mills and furniture factories, has changed noticeably since the hub announcement. “There has to be boxes, there has to be a customer base. But we’re open, we’re ready for business,” he said. Stephens has met with leaders of economic development groups in the region to specify what role the hub can play in recruiting new employers or encouraging existing ones to expand. “FedEx is committed to the community here,” he said. Supporters of the hub view the facility as one salvation for the region’s economy. But critics from the outset have complained that FedEx’s extra late-night and early-morning flights will generate aircraft noise disrupting the quality of life in places such as north High Point and western Greensboro and Guilford County. Stephens said that FedEx “has made significant investments” in aircraft that produce less intrusive noise. “Noise isn’t as much of an issue as it was previously with olderstyle airplanes – much more desirable than it was in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and even the ‘90s, for that matter,” Stephens said. In addition, Stephens said that projections of daily flights that
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have been published since the hub announcement don’t reflect the current capacity of the hub. Reports such as Federal Aviation Administration studies dating back to 2000 indicate that FedEx would have up to 126 daily flight operations between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. But Stephens said the current number of gates at the hub would support 44 daily flight operations. “I think a lot of the information published is based upon ‘maxsite’ numbers. To be quite honest with you, we don’t launch 126 flights out of Indianapolis, and it’s seven times the size of this facility in terms of aircraft parking and four times the size of this facility in terms of box (sorting) capacity,” he said. As the company has done in other parts of the country, FedEx will become integrally involved in charitable activities, Stephens said. “As an employer, as we grow, you have that many more people that can rally behind those types of organizations,” he said. One example of its outreach already – earlier this month, FedEx shipped a gorilla from a zoo in another part of the country to the N.C. Zoological Park in Asheboro. Like the vast majority of FedEx supervisors, Stephens can tap into an experience of having started out as a line employee. He said that background is critical to running the hub. “I’ve been there, and I’ve done that. So I can relate to the challenges they face day in and day out. It helps you from a leadership standpoint understand the dynamics of an operation,” Stephens said. pjohnson@hpe.com | 888-3528
Civic: Supports the March of Dimes, Junior Achievement, United Way, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Habitat for Humanity.
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