LP Gas Hall of Fame profile: Joe Armentano

The 2026 LP Gas Hall of Fame dinner and induction ceremony will take place April 18 at the Omni Nashville Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. This year’s inductees are Joe Armentano of Paraco Gas, Bob Barry of Bergquist, Denis Gagne of Eastern Propane & Oil and Brian Sheehan of Rural Computer Consultants. Visit the LP Gas Hall of Fame website.

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Joe Armentano was not born into the propane business, but the CEO of Paraco Gas eventually found his way into it and made it his home.

With his father, Armentano grew a small industrial gas welding supply business into one of the Northeast’s leading propane retailers.

During Armentano’s youth, his father, Pat, sold welding equipment and supplies. Even then, he was showing his oldest son how to be a businessman.

“I remember, even at 5 years old, he would take me as a kid in his truck with him as he would make sales calls,” Armentano says. “He really taught me about sales and business. He used to always tell me that if I didn’t sell, I didn’t eat.”

With these early lessons, Armentano’s father put him on the path to running one of the biggest independent propane retailers in the Northeast.

“He was obviously the biggest influence in my life,” Armentano says. “He became my father, then my best friend, and eventually, as the company grew, he became my partner.”

But before Paraco became such a key player in the propane industry, it was called Patsem’s, a small industrial gas company that Armentano’s father started in 1968.

“His first name was Pat. How he came up with ‘sems’ is beyond all of us,” Armentano recalls.

When he went off to college at Fordham University in 1972, Armentano kept working with his father and jumped in full time after graduating.

▶ A whole new world

In 1979, Armentano’s father wanted to expand a growing part of the business: propane.

“He asked me to go out and see if I could find a propane company for sale,” Armentano says. In 1979, they bought Paraco Fuel for about $500,000.

“My father had no money at the time and no banking relationship,” he recalls. “He got the sellers to take a note. And we started to get involved in that business.”​

Then in 1985, Suburban Propane put two Long Island locations up for sale. Again, Armentano’s father pushed him into the deep end.

“My father told me to go out and find a banking relationship,” he says.

In his 20s, he pieced together financing and persuaded Suburban to take a note of about $1 million.

“We ended up buying Suburban out on Long Island in June of 1985, and that’s when I decided I needed to get a skill set I didn’t have,” he says.

After that acquisition, he went back to school at night for an MBA in finance and began to shift Paraco from being a small, entrepreneurial shop to what he calls “a professional organization.”

“I became the CEO probably somewhere about 1990,” Armentano says. “My father and I worked side by side.”

In 1996, the family sold the original industrial gas business. Since then, Paraco has become, in Armentano’s words, “probably the No. 1 independent propane marketer in the Northeast.”​

▶ Leading the family business

Paraco now has roughly 500 employees across 27 locations. But even with all its growth over the years, Paraco is still a family business to Armentano.

“The company’s really changed,” he says. “Our job is to try to keep that family culture, keep that family environment, keep that entrepreneurial spirit.”

Working with his father, Armentano had to step up and take responsibility.

“You can’t wait for your parents to give you responsibility,” he advises. “You’ve got to grab it.”

Now he is applying those lessons with his own children, Christina and Christopher. Both built careers elsewhere before joining Paraco, and now they’ve taken on leadership roles in the company.

Christina, now executive vice president and COO, and Christopher, the fleet director, both came into the business on their own timelines. Armentano didn’t force them to join the family business.

“Both of them came aboard when they thought it was the right time,” Armentano says. “The most important thing is that they like what they’re doing.”

▶ Industry service

In addition to his work at Paraco, Armentano has built a name for himself in the propane industry with his work serving as the president of the NYPGA, a member of the NPGA board and chairman of PERC. The experiences broadened his view of the industry.

“I got to really understand how people looked at the propane industry across the country and understood that their needs were different than the needs that I may have in New York,” he says.

In his roles with these associations, Armentano says, he tried to put the needs of the industry above his own.

“One thing that I always believe in, when you’re representing an industry, you’re not representing yourself,” he says. “You’re representing an industry. So you got to put your own personal views aside and look at what’s good for the whole.”

As chair of PERC in 2011-12, he helped steer the council through a period when it faced limits on its ability to market and promote propane.

“We had to basically turn our strategy around a little bit,” he says. That meant working with the council to strengthen personnel and bring in the right consultants. “It was a great experience.”

▶ Finding balance

After nearly 50 years in the business, Armentano is still in the office, but his relationship to the work has changed.

“My friends ask me today, ‘How many hours do you work in the business?’ I probably work maybe about 20, maybe 25 hours in the business,” he says. “But I think about the business probably 80 to 100 hours a week.”

But finding that balance was not easy, and it took time.

“I ended up meeting somebody that became as important, if not more important, to me than the business,” Armentano says.

That balance has driven him to travel more, step out of day-to-day operations and give himself space to think instead of constantly working in the weeds of the business. With that balance, Armentano is still going strong.

“I’m 71 years old. I’m in great health. I have great energy. I love coming to work every day, you know. And I’m still passionate about the business,” he says. “And I still think Paraco has an opportunity to continue to build its brand, build its footprint and continue to strive to be that first-in-class company.”

And Armentano is going to keep putting in the work to do just that.

“Before I retire, I’d like to just say, ‘You know what? We’ve gotten to the mountaintop,’” he says. “So, I think we got a little ways to go.”