Upon meeting Jackie Moore for the first time, you quickly learn he's not into nuance. At first introduction, he measures you up with the intense eye of a practiced appraiser - someone who's spent almost 3/4 of his life in the livestock auction business. His handshake telegraphs his confident nature.
In his corner of the world, he moves like a heavyweight champ, exchanging greeting and flinging one-liners in all directions to a public that all seem to know him. He admits to having a short attention span, a trait he says serves him well in his chosen profession. He seems to operate at just one speed; flat out.
Moore says he's a product of his up bringing, a small cow-calf operation his late father Claude Moore ran, and 45 years spent working in the operation he now co-owns with his sons and son-in-law.
The 64-year-old Moore got his start at the Joplin yards as a 13-year-old. He never wanted to do anything else. He eventually bought a commission at the Joplin yards, which at the time was a faint competitor to the hefty livestock trade going on near Springfield.
Jackie Moore | 2023
Joplin Regional Stockyards
Driving by the old Joplin yards one day, Moore says the idea came to him to buy the operation. That's how his inspirations usually come, he adds, by stewing on the multitude of informational bits he picks up in his non-stop contact with business associates, clients and contacts. In 1986, he partnered up with other family members to buy the old Joplin yards, which at the time marketed 90,000 head per year. The partners built the current JRS facility in Carthage in 1995, which is today the nation's largest cow-calf auction. Moore bought out the other family interests in 2017. Bailey, Skyler and Dustin Eldridge and their wives took ownership along with Jackie.
Today, the JRS operation is one big extended family. With sons Bailey and Skyler doing the auctioneering and order buying and Dustin Eldridge, brother-in-law, working on the financials. "I pretty much have always handled the customers," Moore says. "I'm just a cowman and people person, and I've known most of the people we do business with all my life."
"I'm the visionary, the idea man. I dream up the programs and it's the great partners and people I work with who figure out how to get them done," Moore says, "I spend zero time in the office, and don't carry a calculator or a computer. I rely on business cards, buyers' cards, a cell phone and my good memory."
About 40 full-time and 60 part-time employees, with an average time of service between 15 to 20 years, are employed at the Carthage facility. It features 10 acres under roof with pipe fences that can hold approximately 3,500 head, with feed and water pens. In addition, 51 outside traps with feed, water and shade have capacity for an additional 7,500 cattle. A total of 527,000 head of cattle in 2022, mostly 300-900# calves, for $549 million in volume, sell annually though JRS from a client base of 10,000 sellers. "He was young, hard-working," Joe Day longtime order buyer says with a chuckle as he recalls the frenetic energy Moore brought to the area with the 1986 purchase. "Jackie was out beating the bushes. He wasn't afraid to take chances, and he ran the wheels off his truck calling on people. The commission men in the old stockyards didn't know what hit them," Day adds.
"I don't know a single person involved in Missouri's cattle industry that reaches more people in a given year than Jackie Moore," said Mike John, past MCA and National Cattlemen's Beef Association president. "Thousands of cattle producers from Missouri and bordering states do business with him. He has had and continues to have a profound impact on the cattle industry throughout the state and the country."
Moore admits he sets a torrid pace. "My philosophy has always been to go faster than anyone else. My deal is if they're asleep, I'm awake and trying to get their customers," Moore says. He says his drive comes from growing up, on small farms in Stotts City, a little town not far from Carthage. "I know how important these cattle and the income from them is to these folks," Moore says.
John contends that Moore is one of the most producer-oriented market managers he's ever known. "He honestly believes his mission is to keep small producers in business and to help them adapt to change," said John. "He invests and takes time to adapt and provides his customers with opportunities.
"Our job is to work as hard as we can for our customers to make them aware of industry trends and opportunities," Moore says. "We're not out to tell them how to run their operation. We want our customers to make all they can but it's up to them to participate. In most cases JRS doesn't make any more money, and I tell them that," Moore adds. "Because of that, I think the producer regards us as a more honest source of information."
Jackie always said: "As the population grows everyday the cow herd shrinks, but it's the best time in your life to be in the Cattle Business."