Three South Texas Farmers Started a Rope Company in 1991. They Took a Decade to Turn a Profit. Now Trevor Brazile Designs for Them.

Three South Texas farmers named Jack Stephenson, Joe Mathews, and Mike Piland went into business together in 1991 with no experience making ropes. Stephenson was nicknamed Cactus. That’s where the company’s name came from. Their first product, a head rope called Bad Boy, took three years to become profitable. Their heel rope Omega came alongside it. Through the early 1990s, Cactus Ropes was a three-man operation in South Texas selling at a loss, trying to figure out how to get a rope to run consistently out of a box.

Allen Bach won a world team roping title in 1995 and bought into the company as a partner. Denis Carroll acquired Cactus in 1999, which is the year the growth curve turned. Thirty-five years after those three farmers started twisting nylon, Cactus Ropes is one of the two or three largest team-rope manufacturers in the world. The current product development partner is Trevor Brazile.

Brazile is the only cowboy ever to win 26 PRCA world championships. He retired from full-time competition after the 2018 NFR and logged his 26th title at the 2020 NFR in Arlington. Since then he’s been consulting for Cactus on rope design. His fingerprints are on a line the company is calling The Future.

The Future head rope is a four-strand, thirty-two-foot rope offered in Super Soft, Extra Soft, Soft, and Medium lays. The heel is thirty-seven feet, also four-strand, in Soft through Hard Medium. There’s a thirty-four-foot All-Around option in the lighter lays. What Cactus is selling is something they call Juice Technology, which is a manufacturing adjustment that affects rope memory and honda angle. “It’s pretty unrealistic to think that if you have a different loop and different coils every time that you’re going to be able to be consistent,” Brazile told the Team Roping Journal, “if you’re not consistent in the tool that you’re using.”

That’s the product pitch, from the man who roped for twenty years at the highest level. Consistency. You want the rope to come out of its coils the same way every time, close to your body, without a hitch at the honda. Cactus spent a year testing The Future with Brazile before it shipped. The lay variations are calibrated to a specific loop shape and feel the best ropers in the world want.

The athletes who endorse Team Cactus are the who’s-who of pro roping. Clay O’Brien Cooper, the seven-time heeling world champion. Matt Sherwood, who won three consecutive PRCA team-roping world titles 2006 through 2008 using the Cactus Mini Mag. Chad Masters. Ty Blasingame. Logan Medlin and Ross Ashford. Jake Long. Lari Dee Guy. Hope Thompson. Stran Smith. Riley Minor. Nick Sartain. Eleven or twelve active PRCA and WPRA athletes at the top of the standings with a Cactus rope in their hand.

Rope manufacturing is something most rodeo fans take for granted because, if you watch a team roping run, you never think about the tool. The loop closes. The header gets a head catch. The heeler drops a trap. You think about the horse, about the cowboy’s body position, about the 4.3-second clock. You don’t think about the fact that the rope had to lay perfectly through the fingers, hit a specific honda angle, close with the right amount of memory, and release cleanly from the dally. A rope that does that consistently is the product of about thirty years of manufacturing iteration.

The company produces head ropes, heel ropes, breakaway ropes, all-around ropes, calf ropes, kid ropes, even dummy-roping practice ropes. Most of it sells through the team-roping equipment channels, NRS and rope-specific dealers. The Mini Mag Sherwood used through his three world titles is still in the catalog. The Future, the Brazile line, is the current flagship.

One other piece of context on Cactus’s industry position. The rope business has consolidated heavily over the past two decades. Three brands dominate the pro space: Cactus, Classic, and Fast Back. Each one has its endorsed roster, its proprietary manufacturing process, its specific feel. Most elite ropers settle on a brand early in their career and stay with it. Changing rope brands is, for a world-level header or heeler, close to changing guitars mid-tour. Possible. Not common.

The reason this matters beyond the equipment-geekery is that the rope business is a leading indicator of the team-roping business, which is a leading indicator of the PRCA’s summer numbers. When a rope company invests a year of R&D with Trevor Brazile on a flagship product, it means the pro roping economy is healthy enough to sustain that investment. The Future is not cheap. Cowboys buying it are spending a hundred-something dollars, and they’re going through four or five of them a year.

Cactus is in its thirty-fifth year of operation. Stephenson, Mathews, and Piland started the company because they wanted a better rope than what was available in 1991. Thirty-five years in, what’s in the catalog is the best rope technology in the sport. That’s how you do it. One small improvement at a time for three and a half decades.

The next time you see a 4.2-second run in a short round at Reno or Calgary, look at the rope. Odds are it says Cactus. The company the three farmers built is in the final quarter of most pro ropes being sold in 2026.