Chief Executive Brent Kulp said 2025 marked a year of new company records for TrafFix Devices Inc., the highway safety firm his parents founded 40 years ago.
TrafFix manufactures a catalogue of more than 200 different highway safety and security devices. Kulp took over the business in 2020, and his father Jack Kulp still sits on the board.
While TrafFix does not disclose financials, Kulp told the Business Journal that the San Clemente-based firm saw double-digit sales growth last year. This was driven by products gaining traction in new industries, allowing TrafFix to find and pursue new customers.
The company designs, manufactures and delivers more than 90% of its inventory in-house. Its portfolio includes barricades, delineators, safety apparel, signs and other traffic control and crash attenuation items.
Its newest device, released late last year, is the Block Axess vehicle mitigation system, designed to stop hostile vehicles from driving into crowds at public events. It can be set up in about 14 minutes.
Kulp said it was originally developed in France and TrafFix started manufacturing the product at its Iowa facility last year. He added that last year’s tariffs activity helped TrafFix move a lot of production back to the U.S. at its manufacturing facilities.
Existing products have also been driving demand, such as a truck-mounted attenuator called the Scorpion. The attenuator was designed to disable vehicles that might ram into larger trucks while protecting the drivers involved and the equipment.
Kulp, who received the Business Journal’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award in 2025, noted that fire departments had begun purchasing the device to put on the back of their fire trucks when dealing with traffic-related incidents. The first responders have become a new market for TrafFix, he said.
Another attenuator that saw a lot of activity last year was TrafFix’s Delta device, which is permanently mounted to concrete barriers at highway exits and designed to absorb the energy of a swerving vehicle and safely stop it.
The Delta product received state and federal approvals last year, which boosted sales, according to Kulp. The approvals come after TrafFix’s own round of crash-testing, of course.
“We smash a lot of cars,” Kulp said of “perfecting” its crash-safety products.
40 Years of Expanding
Last year, the company also discovered new clients outside the highway safety industry that were using its products.
Kulp pointed to the firm’s Water-Walls, a temporary crash barrier system, being on the rise for more commercial applications. For instance, tech companies have purchased Water-Walls to place around data centers, according to Kulp.
TrafFix has also used its line of safety apparel, a newer category that the firm has started to expand, to grow its client base, selling to municipalities and public utility companies.
The manufacturer is fielding requests from new companies for the outerwear, Kulp said. This led him to hire “a high-vis expert” in the field named Jim Foster to take the lead on growing that part of the business and keep up with demand.
This year marks TrafFix’s 40th anniversary and Kulp confirmed that the company has not been slowing down, compared to other manufacturers in the highway safety space.
Kulp added that he’s seen a lot of consolidation in the industry with private equity firms buying both its customers and competitors. His plan is to keep the company family-owned and independently run for the foreseeable future.
“We’re becoming an endangered species,” Kulp said.
