About Me

Welcome. My name is Gary Hoskins, and Hoskins Solutions LLC is my company. Here is my story.

It all started when my electrical engineer father brought home the 150 in 1 electronic projects kit, when I was four years old. Between that kit, many more like it, and going to work with him at Commonwealth Telephone Company, where I helped wire and program a telephone operator call center in third grade, my engineering career was inevitable.

At age seventeen, I was off to the the US Air Force, where graduating with a perfect grade point average from electronics school was a walk in the park. Next, I was off to Korea a couple days after my eighteenth birthday. Here, a technical representative from General Electric’s Aircraft Armament Division took me under his wing and made me an expert on the A-10’s 30mm cannon. They would bring that weapon to me, and i would strip it down to it’s smallest parts, clean it, and rebuild it. A departure from the electronics world, but it held my interest for a whole year. Then I found out that with my knowledge of this weapon, and some help from my boss, I could become a gunner in Air Force Special Operations. I did. Best job ever.

After the USAF, i found myself in the BSEET program at Penn State, because of course, that’s what my father did. [I actually had two professors of his]. While taking a technical writing class, I became friends with my professor. Because she couldn’t do document design in Word Perfect and I could, I ended up teaching half of the classes. One day, she was at a Holocaust memorial on campus, sitting next to the matriarch of a family that owned the local Schneider Electric distributorship. She asked my english professor who the best electrical engineering student was. A month later, I was off on my Industrial Automation career as a sales engineer, starting a new division at this company, while finishing my engineering degree at night. After convincing Schneider Electric to donate equipment to build a six station industrial automation lab at Penn State, I developed a 100 hour industrial automation certificate program, and taught the class for about eight years.

I formed Virtual Factory Technologies Inc. in 1999, because I was selling industrial automation equipment at my day job, and teaching at Penn State, and everyone wanted me to help with engineering and programming.

In 2005, I started working on an MBA full-time, and in 2007, after graduating, started on an Industrial and Organizational Psychology PhD. Out of money and growing weary of reading all day long to write a four page paper every day, plus the big papers, I dropped out and pursued engineering again. Virtual Factory Technologies Inc. exploded, and between 2007 and 2015 I was billing as many hours as I could handle in a myriad of industries that required automation.

At some point in 2009, I was feeling lonely in a basement apartment I rented in a sketchy at best neighborhood, in Easton Pennsylvania. I was working at a ductile iron foundry in Phillipsburg New Jersey that was ninety minutes from my home, so this rental made sense. Here I learned of Facebook, and ended up getting into a heated discussion about one of those subjects you should never talk about on Facebook [or at a bar] with a person that graduated from high school a year behind me. I don’t remember ever talking to her back then. She now lived in Columbus Ohio. This was the start of a whirlwind, 3 year, long distance relationship.

In 2012, I purchased a property with two small houses on it in North East Pennsylvania, close to where I grew up. Over the next couple of years, my friends and I gutted and began to remodel both houses. In 2014, with this project about 75% complete, my then long distance girlfriend, invited me out to Columbus Ohio to meet her children. During my drive, a head hunter called, letting me know he saw my resume on Monster.com, and had a client he wanted me to have a phone interview with. I told him I was two hours from Columbus, and how about an in person interview.

The next day, I was off to Kohl’s in New Albany to purchase some proper interview clothing, as my self-employed wardrobe consisted of mostly black t-shirts and jeans. This was my first interview, since that first job in 1992. All my other jobs in between were based on word of mouth, and “when can you start?” I interviewed two times during that trip to Columbus, and a third time during a later visit. Soon, I was texted a job offer.

There I was, knee deep in “life is like a box of chocolates,” with one house 85% remolded [my ultimate bachelor pad], and the other [rental unit that pays the mortgage] around 70%. There was no way my girlfriend was accepting “no” to me moving to Columbus, especially with this job offer. Several friends assured me they would help finish the houses, and on the day before Thanksgiving 2014, with my truck loaded up and a U-Haul trailer in tow, I was off to Columbus Ohio.

From a relationship standpoint, moving to Ohio was the best move, I ever made. After 51 years of bachelorhood, I got married on December 21, 2019. That’s 21.12.19 for you Rush fans and everyone else besides Americans. Wedded bliss is an understatement. From a career standpoint, moving to Ohio was good for about three years, while I was out in the field executing projects. During the last two years, I was promoted to an engineering leadership role. When it came to my direct reports and most projects it was pretty satisfying. Unfortunately, as I was included more and more in what was going on behind the scenes at that company, me, my MBA, and my 1/3 of a PhD in organizational psychology were left in the worst state of existence ever. Look for my best selling novel about this when I retire.

So here I am, working for myself again, in one of the most uncertain economies in U.S. history. After living life in the fast lane for so many years, I am a simple man now. A perfect day for me now is sitting down to dinner that my wife [also an engineer] has prepared with her unimaginable kitchen skills, hanging out by the fire pit outside while pondering existence, hitting the road with my wife on the back of my R1200GS Triple Black Edition, playing the bass guitar, driving a rusty pickup, tent camping, and of course the streaming networks.

Over the last 28 years, there are not many industries I have not worked in, and there are not many brands of automation products I haven’t had my hands on. The amount and diversity of applications I have worked on is mind boggling even to me. This experience and my extremely cost effective rates, I hope, will spark your interest in my services. Please call me to talk about your automation needs.

Thanks for reading.