MOLINE, Ill. — Steve O'Hearn, marketing manager, rental, retired from Deere & Co. last month after a 30-year career.

Asked what he'll miss most about his work in the industry, O'Hearn told RER, “I'll miss the friendships that I've developed over the years. I'll miss people who truly have integrity, who developed sweat equity, they are the salt of the earth. People who work hard. It's a service business. In a service business, there is no traffic jam on the extra mile, you have to stay out there and perform. Amazing what people will sacrifice to serve a customer. Watching people who will do anything because they have so much integrity has been such a great inspiration to me over the years.”

O'Hearn began his career with Deere in 1976 as a technical analyst in the business systems area and later was promoted to corporate industrial equipment division's market development group. He transferred to the Western Industrial Region in Denver as a forestry market representative. From 1981 to 1985, O'Hearn served as territory manager for the Dakotas and northwest Minnesota, and later East Texas. He was promoted to product and market specialist for utility and forestry equipment, and then division manager/government sales in the national sales division.

When the rental marketing group was formed in 1992, O'Hearn became division manager/rental marketing and was promoted to marketing manager/rental in 2000.

O'Hearn pioneered efforts in the early 1990s to have pre-deliveries and installations performed at factory locations by third-party providers that allowed machines to ship directly to large rental accounts, according to Deere's manager of rental marketing Tom Doyle. “His passion and enthusiasm for taking care of the customer and building solid business relationships” helped Deere market its product, Doyle wrote in a Deere announcement.

O'Hearn also served as a director to the boards of the Distribution Contractor Association and the American Rental Association. In 2002, O'Hearn received ARA's Special Service Award.

O'Hearn plans to move to his native Ohio and pursue a seasonal job with the U.S. Park Service and devote more time to his wife and three sons.

“It has been great to see the rental industry grow,” said O'Hearn. “It's a growth industry, and being connected to such a growth industry has been wonderful. Sometimes it grew in fits and starts, but the line has always headed upward, even when it reached a plateau or dipped a little bit. It has been exciting to be part of that upward tick, and I believe that growth will continue upward. Sure there will still be plateaus and downturns, but the arc is upward.”