S.E.C. Real Estate Observer

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The life of Roy Rex Moore, Jr. reflects a full range of the qualities that built modern North American society: hardworking, determined, brave, tenacious, honest, innovative, adventurous, independent, and successful.

Roy’s father, Roy Rex Moore, was born in 1889 in Van Wyck, Idaho, and the oldest of eight children whose parents had emigrated west by covered wagon. Young Roy grew up herding sheep and helping his parents keep the family going. After completing eighth grade, he went to work to help support the family. His son recalls his stories of those pioneer days, when a man could ride clear across the state of Idaho without running into a fence. Eventually Roy Moore migrated to Wyoming, where he met Ida Patrick. They were married in 1932.

Ida was born in 1901 in Lorton, Ontario, Canada, to a comfortable, aristocratic, livestock-oriented family. Her father imported the Suffolk breed of sheep from Europe, and he was the first to export the breed to the U.S. and Japan – a pattern that his grandson, Roy Moore, Jr., was to follow many years later. Ida grew up to be a well-educated eastern lady with perfect manners, but she must have had an independent spirit to head out for the wilds of Wyoming and give her hand to a poor sheepherder. In 1934, they homesteaded a ranch in the southwestern corner of Wyoming, near Evanston, with no close neighbors and no public water, electricity, or telephone. Ida was a full partner with her husband, and a careful housekeeper; she scraped the logs of their first one-room cabin with glass to make them beautiful, and did the same with the two-story log house they built later.

Their only child, Roy Moore, Jr., was born in Salt Lake City in 1935. He was raised on his parents’ sheep and cattle ranches in Wyoming and went to school from first grade through college in nearby Colorado. At Colorado State University in Fort Collins, he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and the National Agriculture Honor Society. After graduating from CSU in 1958 with a Bachelor’s of Animal Science degree in animal production, he returned to the family ranch. His father sold the ranch and retired in 1961, investing in property and moving to Phoenix, where he became a horse trader. Roy followed his parents to Phoenix the following year and began trading property to help his father out of some bad land investments in Phoenix his father had made after he retired. He worked for Ed Post Realty, Arizona’s largest real estate firm, for five years. He headed up the exchange division, which was created at his request, during the last three years. He earned his broker’s license, went into business on his own in Phoenix, starting National Realty Exchange, which was the fore-runner of the RE/MAX format. All seven members were top exchangers. He was soon setting state and national real estate sales records. He married Roberta Olney in 1963, and by 1971, he and Bobbi were the parents of four boys.

In 1967, Roy received the Snyder Trophy for Best Exchange of the Year from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) – one of his most satisfying lifetime achievements. He also served as president of the Arizona Real Estate Exchangers. He received extended education through special courses in real estate and taxation, and in the early 1970s, he began presenting marketing sessions around the country.

During this period Roy exchanged and syndicated into a hotel in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, about 35 miles northwest of Tulsa. Proceeds from Roy’s share of that hotel sale provided the down payment in 1972 for what was to become the Rocking M Ranch in Weiser, Idaho, where Roy got back into raising cattle. In the late 1970’s he became the first in the U.S. to import the Salers breed of cattle from Europe, another treasured lifetime accomplishment. With the Salers breed, he began working toward developing the best possible quality of beef. The family moved to the ranch in 1979, after Roy and Ida Moore had passed away.

Roy continued to build the ranch and resort operations through the 1980’s and 1990’s. As his sons grew up and earned university degrees on the proceeds from their prize-winning 4-H cattle projects, they joined their parents in the family business. In the 20 years since Roy introduced the Salers breed, it has become the eighth largest in the U.S. Its exceptional carcass qualities led Roy to establish Maverick Ranch, the recognized leader in developing branded fresh meat programs and improved nutritional beef products. These programs are currently leading to rapid expansion in sales and production, including some of the first new products of their kind to carry the American Heart Association Heart Check seal of approval. Sales are now in the $800,000. per week average. They have increased 40% in the first five months of 1997 and Maverick Ranch Beef now appears in 5% of supermarkets nationwide.

From 1986 to 1995, annual sales of the Maverick Ranch Association (DBA, Maverick Ranch Lite Beef) increased from $1 million to over $17 million, serving hundreds of supermarkets with Lite and Natural Beef and continuing to add new stores. In 1994 the company opened its own processing facility, expanding from 12 to 65 employees. That year the family formed Moore Holdings as the holding company for nine separate integrated family operations.

In 1995, Maverick Ranch introduced a mail order program, and the business established its own laboratories to perform high-quality food testing for Maverick and other producers. Total operations now have 103 employees.

The resort business at the ranch has also been expanding. After the family converted the ranch headquarters to a hunting and fishing lodge in 1988, annual revenues for this business grew from $14,000 to over $250,000 in 1994. This trend continues, with a new marina (the only one on the 57-mile-long Brownlee Reservoir), an exclusive Honda marine dealership, three boat dealerships, and leasing of houseboats, speedboats, and fishing and sailing boats. The RV business at the ranch has doubled in recent years. In 1997 he closed this operation to the public due to government interference.

In 1991 and 1992 the Moore family also moved into timber marketing, substantially increasing net worth through tax sheltered timber sales. In 1993 Roy purchased a 20,000-acre ranch in Oregon by pre-selling part of the timber for 90 percent of the ranch out of sheltered timber profits at closing. He considers this the best real estate deal he ever made as a principal. Through timber sales from the Rocking M Ranch and the Oregon ranch, he was able to fully retire the debt on both properties.

Throughout his career of over 30 years in real estate exchanging, Roy has handled 400 to 500 exchanges in 34 states and Canada and has never been in court on a real estate transaction. He currently oversees the nine Moore Holdings companies, serving as President and General Partner of each one and passing his experience on to his sons – Rex in the day-to-day beef business operations, Lance in the real estate division, Charlie in the resort and marketing side, and Monte in marketing and advertising with Bobbi. Future plans include moving more than half of the family’s real estate net worth into Maverick Ranch to further the company’s growth in the next few years.

Roy was named U.S. Livestock Man of the Year in 1987. Every day since August of that year, Maverick Ranch has donated the beef for all three U.S. Olympic Training Centers, serving 1,100 athletes a year with over $2 million worth of beef so far – the only family-owned corporation to support the U.S. Olympics to this degree, and the first to carry the Olympic logo on its products, which it has also done since 1987. During the 1992 Olympic Quadrennial, through an historic agreement between the U.S. and Japanese Olympic Committees and Maverick Ranch Lite Beef, Maverick Ranch became the first American company to market in Japan with the U.S. Olympic logo. Roy considers the company’s donation to the Olympics “probably our main contribution to society,” and regards the Olympics as “the strongest social movement worldwide, because they foster peaceful competition and human achievement for the entire world to see.”

In recent years, Roy has continued to win outstanding recognition for his achievements. He received the Cliff Weaver Award for Most Creative Exchange from the Society of Exchange Counselors (SEC) in 1993. The next year he became the first member of the American Salers Association Hall of Fame. He has served as director of the National Cattlemen’s Association, and is one of the few people to have served as president of two national cattle breed associations.

Roy is a member of the Presbyterian Church. He and Bobbi currently live in Colorado, where Moore Holdings and several of its companies are based, but his business dealings often take him elsewhere. At present he is traveling all over the country presenting a series of seminars on beef. His family shows horses and cattle and competes in beef carcass contests, holding the top record in the nation. Bobbi Moore, who majored in interior decorating in college, pursues her interests in art, decoration, and photography. Her husband is a longtime polo player and past president of the Camelback Polo Club in Phoenix, and enjoys riding on the family ranches and elk hunting.

Roy’s business goals are to continue working with his family in the fields of real estate, agriculture, and food production, to develop each of the Moore companies on its own, and to quadruple the beef company’s annual sales to over $100 million in the next 12 or 15 years. He has a vision of Maverick Ranch as a model company of the U.S. Olympic Committee, one they can point to and show the evolution of a very small family-owned business into a corporation having a major impact on the food and cattle industry.

Knowing Roy’s background and vision for the future, it is not surprising that his life goal is “to continue doing what I’m doing for another forty years.” Part of his life’s philosophy is to enjoy his work and his life, looking forward to the excitement and challenges of each new day. To be successful, he believes, you must believe in yourself, have a positive attitude, and be ready to turn failure into an ingredient for success. Roy believes that “only a handful of great opportunities present themselves in a lifetime. The difference between success and failure is to recognize opportunities when they arise and be able to act on them immediately and with confidence.”

Looking back, Roy acknowledges his father as his greatest influence. Both of his parents were strong role models and had a major effect on his life choices. The epitaph he placed on his father’s grave expresses how he himself would most like to be remembered:

“Roy R. Moore – an honest man.”