Jared Hoyle, Ph.D.
Marketing manager, professional turf and ornamental
PBI-Gordon, Kansas City, Kan.
1. How did you get into the business?
Like a lot of people in the turf industry, I got into it by accident. I grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina. I was thinking about going to school, maybe play baseball, but I wasn’t good enough. The next thing I know, I’m mowing this yard, and I go, “Man, that’s the best hourly wage I’ve made in a long time.” I went to school for horticulture and turf. I’m now the marketing manager for professional products that serves both the landscape and golf industries. I’m fairly new when it comes to PBI-Gordon, but I’ve been in the industry for a long time. With academia as my background, I’ve done research development, I owned my own landscape company for a while and I worked on golf courses for a little bit.
2. Do you have a family, and what do you do for fun?
I’m married with two girls, and all three girls are the love of my life. I do anything and everything I can for them. We are an outside family; if we can be outside, whether it be at the pool or fishing, we are. Right now, me and my eldest daughter are constructing a swing set. We love to be out in the sun. The girls are six years old and one is about to be two years old, so I’m in the early stages of the craziness, as I like to say.
3. Do you have a most memorable day at work?
I have one. It was very early on in my career. I was doing maintenance in the lawn care industry. It was the same day as prom, and I’m edging a sidewalk. And of course, I pick up a rock and it hits a vehicle that is going down the road. Needless to say, I had to pick up some extra yards to pay for that side window of that minivan. I still made it to prom, though.
4. What is your favorite tool to get the job done?
It’s the phone. Not in the aspect that you can look stuff up, but in the aspect that it connects you to a great community. When it comes to the turf and ornamental industry, there’s a lot of support across many different networks. To be able to pick up the phone and call somebody, whether it be a friend or a coworker, everybody in the turfgrass industry is here to help.
5. You saw my ’64 Impala and mentioned that you also have a classic car. What is it, and how does it ride?
It rides like a boat. It’s a ’68 Galaxie 500, it’s got a 302 in it. It was my grandfather’s. He had it forever. He got it from a rental car place, and I still have the rental car key chain that’s on it. My grandfather grew up as a tobacco farmer, so he was one who never put a lot into things other than just repairing it as needed. When I pulled it out of the barn and started trying to do some minimal restoration, we found a lot of duct tape, super glue and zip ties on there to correct things. But I got it up and running, and I enjoy it. There are a lot of memories from my family when they were driving it. I’m glad to be able to keep it in the family and keep riding around.
