Rumber

Rumber began in 1991 when an inventor in Munster, Texas created a product born from personal frustration. His wife was a competitive barrel racer, and he was tired of cleaning out her horse trailer. Rather than accept the status quo of wood floors and rubber mats, he engineered a solution: composite boards made from recycled tires and recycled plastic, extruded together. The innovation was solid, and he knew exactly where to sell it.

The inventor went straight to cattle manufacturers in cattle country—Munster, Texas—pitching his superior flooring system. The product resonated, and he raised capital to scale. "A couple hundred grand" came in around 1991, but a critical moment came when he divided the investment dishonestly. He pocketed half and left the investors short. The largest investor, a wealthy Austin businessman, could have sued but chose a smarter path: he converted his investment into debt and took control of the company.

The company spent 22 years building a customer base and a team. Fifty employees worked there, getting paid more each year than the last. The product found its way into critical markets: cattle and livestock trailers, U.S. military applications, oil field operations, transportation, and marine industries. The demand was real, but the inventor had grown ill, and the company needed new leadership.

When Brian Adams bought Rumber in 2012 for approximately $5 million, the business was doing between $5-10 million in annual revenue with roughly 30% profit margins. Adams saw an efficiency opportunity. He reduced headcount significantly while ramping production—by the time of this interview, they were producing 30,000 pounds per day across two shifts of 12-hour workdays. His key metric: pounds per hour of output. "We measure every day. We try to get better every day," he explained. The biggest challenge remained manufacturing expertise. No one else in the world knew how to make this product at scale. Adams had even traveled to China seeking manufacturing partners, but they couldn't crack the process. The business remained patented and protected.

By 2014, with two years of ownership under his belt, Adams had the company positioned to hit $10 million in revenue. He was obsessed with operational excellence—measuring payroll to production ratios, optimizing the Munster facility, and running a lean operation. At 36 years old, married with three kids, still sleeping eight hours a night, Adams embodied the efficiency mindset he'd brought to Rumber. He credited his success to learning from mistakes—both his own in his first business and those of others. His advice to younger entrepreneurs: find a successful mentor and learn what not to do on someone else's dollar, not your own.