Crystal Gipson
Austin Laramore with his chute in the background.
Team roping has been a part of the Laramore family coat of arms for as long as Austin Laramore has been living and breathing.
“It goes back a way,” he says, noting that his father Scott Laramore was a four-time qualifier for the National Finals Rodeo, the preeminent destination for rodeo competitors and symbolic of having reached the apogee of your profession.
To Laramore, team roping is a hobby done in leisure, but for others, like his father in yesteryear, it’s a business. To practice requires hours and a chute that loads and releases a calf or steer efficiently and effectively.
“We found over the years by using other products that there was a better way,” Laramore says.
Twenty-six miles west of Fort Worth in Carbon, Texas, is the headquarters of Chute Help, that better way, Laramore is convinced.
Laramore is co-founder of the company, which manufactures a chute designed and engineered by Laramore and his grandfather Tom Gipson, a team roper himself.
The Fully Automatic Roping Chute received a U.S. and Canadian patent in 2011. The patent covers any remotely operated front and back gate that is powered by the animal. Chute Help’s mechanism works using the weight of the steer or calf to power the front and rear gate. The steer stepping onto the floor of the chute springloads the front and shuts the back simultaneously.
The chute is synched with a remote, which allows the ropers to control the opening of the gate. When the steer leaves the chute, the floor comes back up because of two counterweights. When it does that it shuts the front and opens the back. Another steer moves in place of the just departed because a steer will do what steers do: inherently follow the herd.
A solar panel on top of the chute helps extend the life of the battery the remote is synched to.
No electricity or compressed air is required for it to function. When you buy one, it’s ready to go. There is no installation cost or time required; set it down and get to work.
“The inspiration for the design was actually a Rolex watch,” says Laramore. “In the charging station they use the rock back and forth to charge the battery. That mechanism rocking back and forth was the first inspiration on how to store energy without using that electric hookup or compressed air. The ramp or floor mechanism comes from that.”
Neither Laramore nor his grandfather, now 92, come from engineering backgrounds. “That would have been helpful,” Laramore jokes.
His grandfather — Gipson — however did come from an industrial background, working on and building coil tubing oil rigs for a “long, long time.” Gipson has an engineering mind, Laramore says. Laramore comes from the business angle, though the business has taught him to be somewhat of a hobbyist engineer. “Dangerous enough to screw something up,” Laramore kids.
Cesar De La Cruz is a team roper in the Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association, better known simply as the PRCA. He calls Chute Help the “best tool in the arena.”
“Some say it creates a delay in the steer or calf's start, but it really doesn't,” De La Cruz says. “Even so, I like all of my horses to leave off of the steer rather than the opening sound or motion of the chute.”
Unlike many others, the company is currently riding the wave of the pandemic, which necessitated — some say ordered — many to stay away from the general population and at home, and/or outdoors. New habits were formed from the experience, as well.
“That allowed us to grow and get more products and dealers,” Laramore says. “Business is getting much better.”
Those other products are accessories. The company can build a complete, portable roping arena, as well as leadups, which stores the cattle and leads them into the chute.
The company employs seven full time. Laramore has also hired some sales help on a contract basis. That frees him up to focus on production, he says, though there’s no mistaking that, like all small family owned businesses, he does a bit of everything.
So, confidence is trending upward at the company, which recently was selected one of TechFW’s “Rising Stars” at the nonprofit incubator’s Impact Awards.
The partnership between the two has been a blessing, Laramore says, beginning with being paired with a mentor who “has been an absolute godsend for our business and me specifically.”
TechFW works with many biotech startups, not generally with an industrial manufacturer, such as Chute Help.
“But they can bend many ways and wear many hats,” Laramore says. “They are helpful for any business.”
More recently, the company added a robotic welder, which aided them in getting through labor shortages.
“Chute Help was selected as a Rising Star Award recipient because of Austin's exceptional growth in contribution to Agricultural Technology, or agritech,” says Cortney Gumbleton, assistant director of TechFW. “His application of technology has a sustained and positive impact in our community and beyond.”
That application might soon extend to the ranching community at large as a new chute patent in the works could drastically improve the time it takes ranchers to secure livestock.