Priefert and PBR: A True Cowboy Collaboration

By: Andrew Giangola

Nearly two decades ago, legendary PBR bull rider Mike White liked what he saw in his growing sport.

More fans were coming to events and watching on TV. A PBR broadcast on NBC had brought in a huge 2.3 rating, surprising the entire sports world.

And, most satisfying, bull riding purses were getting fatter. In fact, White’s buddy Chris Shivers had become the first pro bull rider to earn $1 million in a single season.

There was one thing White didn’t like – the bucking chutes.

It didn’t feel right that the most dangerous place for a rider was when sitting on top of a quivering bull before the duo even exploded onto the dirt.

Gaps in the metal could snag a bull’s leg or horn. And the chutes were prone to break. Nuts and bolts would come loose, exposing sharp, potentially deadly objects to both human and bovine athlete.

It was also costly and inefficient for PBR’s road crew to be dealing with chutes and pens always breaking down.

White had a good friend in northeast Texas, Eddie Priefert, who was in the ranch equipment business. His brother Nate was White’s steer roping partner.

Priefert, who is now president of the company his grandfather Marvin founded in 1964, remembers the conversation with White that would change the course of his organization’s history, while having an indelible impact on PBR as well.

“One day, Mike says to me, ‘Priefert, you need to be building bucking chutes. Ours aren’t holding up. They don’t break down well for shipping, and they’re dangerous,’” Priefert said.

Priefert knew his company, which manufactured and sold horse stalls, panels and a host of other livestock and rodeo equipment, was the most innovative supplier in the livestock handling industry, and could build just about anything.

The practical ingenuity at the core of the Priefert brand began with Marvin Priefert, a hardworking wheat farmer who grew tired of Nebraska’s cold and wind and relocated to Texas more than 60 years ago.

Marvin settled in Mt. Pleasant, about 100 miles east of Dallas, and bought about 40 head of cattle. Struggling to manage them, he went into his shop and built a head gate to help in confining the cattle for vaccinations and medical checks.

Neighbors were impressed by the head gate in the alleyway. Marvin built a few more for them. His friends’ veterinarians loved the gates, which made their work safer and more efficient.

As word spread, Marvin kept making gates. In short time, he was selling them to vets around the nation. Vets would strongly encourage local ranchers to put them in – the best free marketing money could buy.

Priefert’s new manufacturing company would routinely branch out with new equipment for the cattle market – eventually offering 1,500 products.

So, as to White’s suggestion, designing and building new bucking chutes for the growing sport of professional bull riding wouldn’t be a problem.

The issue was demand. What kind of market could possibly exist to make the effort worth it?

Priefert decided the volume wasn’t there, and he took a pass.

Yet, when bidding to build horse stalls, panels, gates, and other livestock products, customers were asking to see rodeo equipment – most notably, bucking chutes. Without the chutes, the company would lose a few deals. Others within the company were also pushing to pursue the new product.

Still, Eddie Priefert resisted. Until a few months later and a conversation he remembers as clear as if from this morning.

“One day, one of our competitors was saying hello, and before I left, someone in his organization smarted off, and said ‘Priefert, keep building that lightweight sh*t, and we’ll take care of the big boys and build the heavy weight sh*t,” he said.

The fuse was lit. Eddie told Mike White he was ready to start.

Jerome Robinson, PBR’s man overseeing the logistics and construction of the arenas and back pens, provided invaluable guidance on ways to improve the current chutes and pens.

Priefert’s ace design, engineering and fabricating teams quickly got to work. A prototype chute – more robust and substantial with a number of safety improvements– was ready for PBR Livestock Director Cody Lambert to review ahead of a PBR event in Oklahoma City.

Priefert drove six hours from Mt. Pleasant to Oklahoma City. He was nervous. Lambert was a no-nonsense, no-compromises man known for his exacting standards.

In the Ford Center parking lot, the gruff cowboy saw how the gates worked and traversed the cat walks.

After receiving approval from the fastidious Lambert, the Priefert team took more feedback from PBR, built its first set of connected chutes, and shipped them to Mike White for field testing with live animals. White and Shivers bucked a few bulls and made notes for additional tweaks.

A month later, in August 2005, PBR CEO Randy Bernard and his top lieutenant Sean Gleason toured the Mt. Pleasant plant. They made suggestions for the chutes to be more marketing friendly to give visibility for sponsor stickers and signage. They also soaked in the Priefert family culture.

“We hit it off very well with Randy and Sean,” Priefert said. “We’re like-minded people.”

The PBR executives were so impressed with what they saw that they wanted to roll out six brand new red chutes at PBR World Finals three months later.

Priefert delivered the first pens and chutes along with its rough stock panels and gates, which make up the rest of the arena, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a minor league challenger event Chris Shivers was promoting.

It was a quietly successful debut. With a few more minor refinements, the chutes would be introduced with larger fanfare two and a half months later at the PBR World Finals in Thomas & Mack Center, along with the arena and holding pens and an outdoor arena setup, complete with mutton bustin’ chutes in “Priefert Stock Contractor Alley” where popular bulls were housed.

And then every big rodeo wanted the new chutes with their no-stick easy opening gates, safe rounded edges, shock-absorbing rubber, and smart design making it nearly impossible for bulls to catch a horn or leg.

In retrospect, Priefert admits he misread the market.

“I was completely wrong that the bucking chutes would be a low-volume line; I didn’t know this world very well,” he said. “Within the next year and a half, we were starting to pick up the major rodeos and building 100 bucking chutes a year, and still do on average 75 to 80 a year.”

Soon marquee events like the Calgary Stampede, Cheyenne Frontier Days and NFR would be using Priefert bucking chutes. Everyone wanted what was safest and best for TV.

Priefert became the official equipment partner of PBR – its name seen every week on global television broadcasts.

In the grand scheme, PBR is a minor part of the company’s overall business in which 850 employees make 1,500 products for 1,200 dealers sold worldwide, including PBR hotbeds Australia, Brazil, Canada and Mexico.

But the PBR association provides powerful awareness and credibility.

“It’s great to have our name on the chutes and the recognition among fans and in the industry,” Priefert said. “PBR raises awareness of our brand and helps drive people to our website.”

Ultimately, the company’s success in PBR in supplying the bucking chutes, rough stock panels and working pens that make up the bull riding arena is a result of true 360-degree collaboration, he says.

“We’ve always taken everyone’s needs into consideration – the cowboy, the breakdown crew, the stock contractors, the marketing executives… to build a product with the right attributes that’s a centerpiece to the event and the venue,” he said.

For cowboys, stock contractors and bucking bulls, it’s a good thing Marvin Priefert wasn’t a fan of cold Nebraska winters.

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