Known as Rudie, Hass quit school after finishing 10th grade at age 15 and went to work.
After reading a magazine article illustrating an avocado tree with dollar bills hanging from it in 1925, Hass used all the money he had, plus a loan from his sister,[3] Ida Hass, to buy a small acre and a half avocado grove at 430 West Road La Habra Heights, California.
Hass hired a professional grafter named Mr. Caulkins, who advised Mr. Hass to buy[3] avocado seeds[4] from a nursery owned by Mr. Rideout[5] and grow his own seedlings and then have them grafted to the Fuerte variety.
Mr. Hass was not a botanist like Luther Burbank (1849 - 1926) who purposely cross pollinated plants to produce over 800 better varieties.
Hass had his wife Elizabeth take his picture kneeling by the seedling and showing one of the tiny avocados hanging over his hand.
That picture has been immortalized in a portrait painted by Rudolph Hass's grandson, Thomas Wilkes.
[6] As the tree grew and produced more fruit than the family could use, Hass took some to his co-workers at the Pasadena Post Office.
The Hass family began to work harvesting and selling avocados from a roadside stand by the grove at 430 West Road in La Habra, California.
Hass also contacted the 'Model Grocery Store' on Colorado St. in Pasadena and found it to be a ready market.
The chefs of wealthy people who lived on South Orange Grove Street shopped there, and once they sampled the Hass variety, they insisted upon it.
Rudolph Hass expanded to Fallbrook, planting an 80-acre (320,000 m2) orchard in 1948 which bore its first crop in 1952, just as his 17-year patent expired.
One month after the patent expired in August 1952, at the age of 60, Rudolph Hass suffered a heart attack on September 24, 1952.