The coal industry has lost a true innovator, designer, mentor and friend in the passing of John J. “Joe” Childress of Daniels.
In the field of coal processing, construction, design and operations, Childress, 73, was an innovator.
A construction worker at heart, he started his career in the early 1960s employed by Roberts & Schaefer Construction Co. as a field manager/construction services with responsibilities for assisting in the design of, and managing the field construction services and “start up” functions for, many coal-processing plants across the country and around the world.
In the mid-1970s, he started his own coal-processing, construction services contract services company, and was successful in leading the wave of new coal-processing design initiatives that are used in plants around the world today. He was one of the first to design and construct a “Feed to Zero” type circuitry.
In the 1990s, he designed and patented the only known MULE (Moveable Unit Low Elevation) coal-processing plant utilizing heavy media circuitry known to be in existence.
