New to the Material Handling Industry?

Joe Prestella (National Accounts Manager) discusses what it is like to be new to the material handling industry and what drew him to this role.

How can you be successful as someone new to the material handling industry?

“What I would tell someone who’s looking at coming into the material handling industry is if you’re someone who enjoys thinking on your feet, problem-based learning, and project-based learning, it’s going to be very rewarding for you. You’re going to meet a variety of people. You have a variety of different needs and circumstances that are going to turn to you and your team and say, “How can you help me overcome these obstacles or challenges?”. I like being the fixer. I like being the person who can help someone with the challenge and help them to see the opportunity that lies within that challenge to overcome it, and Storage Solutions has provided me with that avenue and the opportunity to do so. And it helps that I have a really great team that I’m a part of. I would also tell them if you’re going to transition from another industry, a lot of your skills are going to be transferable, but there’s going to be a knowledge base that will represent a learning curve. What’s been extremely helpful to me is just my proximity to our engineer, our project manager, our head of our division out here; my proximity to them and being able to ask them questions and kind of rub elbows with them has really helped me with my transition from the public sector into working at SSI. I also think it’s important that trying to identify a mentor or someone who wants to serve as a mentor early on will definitely help kind of flatten some of those learning curves that exist out there.”

What drew you to this industry? What do you find interesting?

“So, what I find particularly interesting about the industry is getting to work with different individuals in the course of just a year here. I’ve been fortunate to work with companies like Panasonic and Harley-Davidson and kind of get to see through the looking glass what it takes to make some of these organizations work, and you also get to see what you can bring through Storage Solutions to offer these companies to help them maximize their efficiencies and their workflows. So, being able to know that we have clients who are household names and household brands that we have something at SSI that we can offer them to help enhance their operation. That’s very fulfilling, knowing that I’m going to go home and open my pantry and see a label of something in that pantry and that I was able to somehow contribute to the success of that organization and also to the success of our own team and organization. That’s a very fulfilling thing to know that you were part of that. And even if it’s in a very small part, I was able to get a couple of extra pallet positions in this warehouse, which seems like not a huge consequence, but to some people, it’s very important to know that you were able to contribute to increasing and maximizing peoples’ efficiency. That’s important to me, and it makes me excited about coming to work every day.”