Joyce Michael is a mover.
As president and owner of Chicago Heights’ Precision Transportation Inc., one of the five female-owned (out of 800 total) North American Van Lines agencies in the United States and as a future president of the Chicago Heights’ Rotary Club, she knows she didn’t get there because some fairy godmother plopped her down in the cushy lap of success. No, sir, not Joyce Michael, only child of Pearl and Woodrow Morgan of Booneville, Miss.
“Don’t ever tell me you’ve done your best because if you could do it over you’d do better,” was a bit of Woodrow’s advice to young Joyce. Other fragments of his wisdom told her she could grow up to be whatever she wanted and to never put limits on herself. He also admonished her to “be true to yourself, don’t forget who you are.”
That Michael is the sum total of all those who have touched her life and all of her experiences is clear when she speaks. “What you see is what you get,” she’s fond of saying.
What you see is a professional woman with a warm ingratiating smile. What you get is the child of poor but hardworking people, a single mother who at one time held down a second job as a waitress to make ends meet, a former model, a homemaker, a former Sunday school teacher, foster mother to exchange students, a community volunteer and a woman with a gift for making people feel comfortable. In the moving and storage business, Joyce Michael is one of the guys, and much, much more.
For Michael, perhaps the most important part of her deceased father’s legacy was the grit and determination of a man who worked his way up from poorly educated handyman to head of his own large moving and storage agency, representing seven carriers. His life established a benchmark for work that inspires her every day.
Pearl’s influence was that of a young woman who, finding herself divorced from Woodrow and with a child to feed, worked long hours as a seamstress in a Mississippi shirt factory. As Robin Obregon, Michael’s 29-year-old daughter and a Chicago Heights medical assistant, puts it, her mom is “a me-do person, someone who can stand on her own two feet.”
Mike Kranisky, executive vice president-general manager of North American Relocation Services, headquartered in Ft. Wayne, Ind., calls Joyce a person with “common sense, energy and integrity.”
Kranisky, who was instrumental in helping Michael attain her own agency, the only female-owned one in the Chicago area, also said she is “extraordinarily resourceful and tenacious.” Referring to her reputation and the fact that she has paid 27 years’ worth of dues to get where she is, he boasted that “as a result, she knows how to spell truck.”
She knew how from the start. It was just that she needed to prove it.
Back in 1965, when television’s June Cleaver was putting out after-school cookies and milk for Wally and the Beaver, Joyce Michael decided she wanted to go to work. More than that, “I wanted a career. But back then women weren’t taken that seriously,” she remembered. Needless to say, it wasn’t an easy or popular decision for the young mother.
How young she was is a matter for some speculation, since Michael will only allow that she’ll “never see 49 again.”
Her son Bob Michael, a 32-year-old Dallas attorney, admitted that, although he knew she was very young when he was born, he never knew his mother’s exact age until he was grown and saw her birth date on his birth certificate.
Married just out of high school and pregnant not long after, Michael already had two small children by the time she and her first husband moved to Lockport from Mississippi. He worked for a Fisher Body plant then located in Willow Springs and she felt the need to supplement their income.
“I scanned the Yellow Pages and decided to apply for work at McCabe Moving & Storage in Joliet,” Michael recalled. It was instinct and perhaps habit that took Michael to a moving company since, according to Bob, “transportation runs in our family.”
Michael said: “It just felt right. I applied to do anything at all. I wanted to get my foot in the door.”
So she started as part-time office help at the North American-affiliated McCabe. Before long it turned into a full-time job. The man who was Michael’s boss and is today her second husband, Tom McCabe, recalled that she did a little of everything, from accounting to typing to dispatching.
In 1969, Michael was asked to serve as general manager of McCabe’s Chicago Heights operation, “temporarily, until they could find a man to take the job,” she recalled. The irony was that they never did hire a man because Michael was doing such a great job. It was a position she would hold until McCabe Moving & Storage went out of business in early ’92. Michael opened Precision Transportation, Inc. for North American shortly thereafter.
McCabe, now retired, noted that Joyce “grew into the job,” crediting her flexibility and ability to relate well with people for at least part of her success. Calling her a “very strong manager and a fierce competitor,” he pointed out that Michael always went the extra mile by attending all of North American’s sales and management training programs as well as taking on consulting work.
As manager for McCabe, Michael was the first in the country to employ all-female packing crews, according to McCabe. Although it seemed daring at first, the move was ultimately copied by other agents.
When anyone thinks of moving and storage, the first mental image is one of huge, Teamster-driven 18-wheeled rigs lumbering down highways. Burly movers load and unload trailers tightly packed with everything from pianos to boxes of fine china. Joyce Michael shatters that picture.
Tall and statuesque, this day wearing a tailored navy blue suit, white blouse with antique lace at the collar, a delicate gold locket, with not a strand of silver hair out of place, Michael looks like the ultimate business woman. When she speaks, her voice has all the genteel flow of the South but no longer any of the Mississippi drawl. Soft-spoken to a fault and aware that those trailors hold more than pianos and china, her demeanor is quietly reassuring.
Michael knows that when moving day comes, those big rigs carry even more than the years of specially collected Christmas ornaments and fragile Stiffel lamps. They carry people’s lives.
“You’re moving everything a family owns, their most personal belongings. Moving is catastrophic for people,” she said.
Ira Trueman, a retired textile salesman living in Chicago, first became acquainted with Michael in 1967 when his family was planning to move from Park Forest to Olympia Fields: “I got a number of estimates but went with Joyce because I just totally trusted her. She is honest, conscientious and trustworthy, he said, adding that Michael had not only moved his furniture twice but has handled three moves for his daughter.
Michael also recognizes that moving day is traumatic for corporations as well. With families, the company moves their lives; with corporations, it moves many, many lives, plus what may be a lifetime of investment in machinery and equipment.
This is a knowledge that has served Michael well, according to McCabe. It was from that understanding that the all-female packing crew-idea was born. Pearl, who had moved up from Mississippi when Joyce and her first husband got divorced, was their first female packer and before long became chief packer.
The other benefit of the female packers, McCabe said, was that they only wanted to work part time as a rule. From a pure business point of view this translated to better service for less since they weren’t employing full-time union people.
“Joyce put herself in the place of the person who’s moving and thought she’d feel more secure knowing that the good china was packed more carefully by a woman,” McCabe said.
As Bob Michael, who worked in the moving business while in college, explained, moving is an intrusive occupation. His mother is sensitive to that. Kranisky refers to this as being customer-oriented. Bob calls it being a “strict adherent to the customer’s desires.”
In the fledgling Precision Transportation, Michael is managing just two employees: her husband, who works on a volunteer basis, and an office assistant. She works with a North American warehouse in Naperville to serve local clients and has access to the company’s facilities worldwide.
According to Don Goff, Michael’s natural ability with people earned her the Outstanding Rotarian of the Year Award just two years after she became Chicago Heights’ first woman Rotarian. Goff, of Homewood, is Rotary’s current president and director of the Chicago Heights based Regional Economic Development Corp. He has known Michael for nine years and was a booster when the club decided she would be the first to break the gender barrier in ’87.
“I got involved by accident,” Michael claimed. “It was because of a stupid comment I made when I heard about the women who sued to be able to join Rotary in California.
“I couldn’t imagine how anyone would want to be in a club where they weren’t wanted. I opened my mouth and put my foot right into it. The next thing I knew some friends invited me to join (the Chicago Heights Rotary).”
Goff noted that Michael jumped in with both feet. She immediately volunteered to host a Rotary-sponsored foreign exchange student. One student led to three at a time, which led to more, and since 1988, Michael has hosted nine students, whom she refers to as her “children all over the globe.”
For Goff, it’s Michael’s attitude that sets her apart.
“If I ever wanted anyone to be a bird dog it’d be her,” he said. Recalling the day she was nominated for president, Goff said her nominator (“the biggest non-feminist I know”) prefaced his announcement to the group by saying, “You’re going to flip when you hear my nomination.”
“She’s so dynamic and such a joy to be around that I couldn’t be happier (that she’s going to be president),” Goff concluded.
Dawn Hogeveen, manager of administrative operations for the city of Chicago Heights, has served on the United Way Board with Michael for 10 years and echoes Goff’s praise. She said that Michael can be counted on.
“Her involvement in the community is amazing. It’s not like she was sitting at home all day and decided to occupy her time with volunteer work,” Hogeveen said, adding, “She’s unbelievably energetic.”
As a role model for that energy, Michael mentions longtime family friend and former neighbor Mauvelene West of Booneville. West, who’s proud of her 81 years (“it’s my weight I’m not telling”) refers to Michael as “one of my most favorite people in the world.” The feeling is mutual.
Michael looked up to “Aunt Mauvelene” as a woman “who did it all. She had a family, a wonderful garden, a full-time job and she was active in the community. When I go home (to Booneville), her house is the first place I go,”
Indeed, West, who relishes the memory of Joyce’s weekly visits when she was a child, spends a lot of time at the stove when she knows Michael is coming to town. In addition to preparing her favorite dishes, West baked and froze eight different cakes for Michael to take home on her most recent visit. She regards Joyce as an “unusually sweet person who was always straightforward and dependable.”
West, whose husband gave Woodrow his first job and helped him buy his first truck, isn’t at all surprised by Michael’s success.
“She’s got a streak of her father’s determination in her, that’s for sure,” she allowed. But even as a child she was extraordinarily helpful. “She would ride the school bus with me and loved to operate the door,” West recalled.
As for Joyce Michael, mother, although she does feel there were a lot of things she missed, “we made hours out of minutes when we were together.” Her children both look at their mom with admiration. Robin said, “She never ceases to amaze me with all she can do.” And Bob admits to believing every woman was as strong as his mother.
“We lived with my grandmother and my mother. They’re both powerful people,” Bob said, acknowledging that feminism didn’t come as a shock to him. “I admire my mom’s sense of adventure and the fact that she’s a good sport.”
As for the future, in spite of the tight economic times the south suburbs have experienced, in spite of federal deregulation of the trucking industry, Michael is aiming to be among North American’s top 10 agents within five years, which includes having her own warehouse. McCabe is certain she’ll succeed. Nor would that surprise son Bob, who maintains, “If anybody can do that, my mom can.”
