Senior Jack Hotine Charts Out Path for Future

Jack Hotine is among the hundreds of members of Huntington High School’s Class of 2025 who has been busy making plans and sketching out a path for his future. He will be building upon twin interests that he has pursued in recent years.

“After graduating high school, I plan to work with my family in our excavation company, D.C Crane Service that my grandpa, grandma, dad and uncle started,” Mr. Hotine said. “I have been going to work with my brother and dad since I was eight years old. During summers and vacation time and after school, I would go to work, working with trucks, tractors trailers, excavators and bulldozers and other machinery. So it is like second nature to me and I couldn’t see myself doing anything else that would be more meaningful than to keep the legacy going and honor the hard work my family has done.”

Mr. Hotine is an earnest, hardworking and downright ingenious young man. “I started my own business a year ago where I am the owner and operator of JH Horse Hauling,” the teenager said. “I transport horses from state-to-state across the northeastern United States from farms all over. I started out when I got my license at 16 and bought my first truck and at the time my mom owned a few horses. My Mom needed a way to get them around so I got a livestock trailer that holds four horses and at the time I was just moving her horse.”

As Mr. Hotine went about his work, the folks working at the farms he visited were impressed with his operation and asked him if he could haul their horses, too. “So, I started doing that for hire,” he said. “My first load was from Montgomery, New York to Reading, Pennsylvania and I saw the future in this industry. After that, I knew what it had to offer. The people that I hauled horses for would recommend me to others and I continued to get more work to keep me busy, doing little side hauls, gaining clients from all over, including upstate New York, Vermont, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and many more places.”

The Huntington senior’s reputation in the industry has grown. “Earning respect from many farms and meeting a lot of great people on the way has helped me,” Mr. Hotine said. “Huntington High School has showed me essential things to know about life to run a business dealing with numbers, including money management, how a business is structured and the different types of industries and how they manage everything while keeping it steady and efficient and the things you need for a business, including insurance corps and many more things.”

Mr. Hotine will be with his classmates on Friday, June 27 at Blue Devil Stadium for Huntington’s 164th commencement exercises. His future will begin immediately after the ceremony.

“I have had a great experience here at Huntington High School,” Mr. Hotine said. “Thank you to all!”