Our founder, Gary Sebring, started in business in 1976 to help businesses in the greater Kansas City area secure better telephone communications with purchased telephone systems. Since he had a need to carry inventory to and from the client’s workplace, Gary used a car with a hatchback to carry the inventory. As the business grew, more space was needed, so he purchased a small truck and had a fiberglass cap installed. That was in 1978. Whenever it rained or snowed, however, he was unable to see out the back glass of the cap because of the water and debris that was deposited on the rear glass while traveling down the roads. After a near accident with an eighteen wheeler while driving down the highway because he could not see the truck through the dirty rear window, he asked himself “why don’t they put wipers on the rear windows of these caps?” After checking with the dealer where he purchased his cap, he was told that no manufacturer offered a rear wiper. The wheels started turning! He planned to make one for himself, and maybe sell it to other people who also saw the need for the product. But as small businesses go, he got too busy with the telephone business to think about the wiper product. Besides, when it wasn’t raining or snowing, he could see out the window fine, so didn’t think about the need. Through the years whenever he drove through rain and was unable to see out the back window, he thought again about the need for the wiper, and vowed to someday invent one.
Fast forward to 2010. Gary had sold the telephone business, started another business buying and renting houses, still using caps on his trucks and still seeing the need for a cap wiper system. He made some time available and purchased a used cap from the salvage yard, cut it in half, and moved the back half into his basement, where he started to work on a wiper system for the back window. In a matter of a few weeks he had a prototype working pretty well, with the wiper motor, washer reservoir with pump, and a switch mounted on a piece of plywood. He was ready to install it permanently on his truck. He found that the best place for the motor to mount was through a hole in the glass near the top of the window, but the glass was tempered and could not be drilled. He had to replace the glass with one that had the hole drilled before tempering. With that done, the prototype was installed on the truck and it worked very well.
Gary determined that the best way to market the new product was to sell to existing cap owners first then also sell to cap manufacturers so they could offer it on their caps. All SUV type vehicles come from the factory with rear wipers installed, and since pickup trucks with caps are very popular, it just stands to reason that they too should have the wipers installed at the factory. When you think about it, a four door truck with a cap has all the advantages of an SUV. It seats five to six people in comfort, has all the bells and whistles of the SUV, and has protected storage behind the rear seats But with the cap removed, it can haul tall items like a refrigerator or furniture that the SUV can’t. That makes the truck much more versatile than an SUV. All it needs is the one thing that a SUV has that the truck doesn’t. A rear wiper! Just watch truck sales increase and SUV sales decrease once the truck cap wipers are installed on all caps.