Matt Heller

I make things loud for a living.

HornBlasters. Tampa, Florida. Since 2002.

Founded: 2002
Customers: 1M+
Home base: Tampa FL
SEMA Magazine: Top 35

Twenty-four years of train horns, a warehouse in Tampa, and a life that got more interesting along the way. The short version is below.

Matt Heller sitting on an open truck tailgate with two sets of chrome train horns, the HornBlasters warehouse behind him.

Featured by

Discovery
MTV
CMT
FOX News
CNN
MSNBC
CNBC
Forbes
The Wall Street Journal
Newsweek
Inc.
Entrepreneur
Jalopnik
Huffington Post
The Miami Herald
The Daily Mail

Matt Heller on a walkway above the HornBlasters warehouse floor, pallets of stock behind him.

The story so far

I started HornBlasters in Tampa in 2002. Back then, if you wanted a real locomotive horn on your truck, there was nowhere to buy one. So I built the kits myself and sold them to people who were as obsessed with loud as I was. Turned out there were a lot of us.

Twenty-odd years later we have shipped to more than a million people around the world. It grew from train horns into air horns, onboard air systems, compressors, and just about every part that moves air on a vehicle. We were the first ones selling these to regular people, and a lot of them still come to us first.

I still run it out of Tampa, same city where it started. The warehouse got bigger. The products got better. The idea never changed. Make it loud, make it right, stand behind it.

Away from the shop

Not everything I do is loud. These are a few that were worth keeping.

Matt Heller on a quad in open sand dunes. — Quad riding in the dunes.

At the controls of a light aircraft, turquoise coastline through the windscreen. — Flying over the coast.

Four friends under the wing of a light aircraft parked on a beach airstrip. — Beach stop with the plane.

Scuba diving in clear open water. — Scuba diving.

Television started calling

Television started calling somewhere along the way. We have been on the season premiere of Garage Rehab with Richard Rawlings, plus Pimp My Ride, Trick My Truck, The Auto Firm with Alex Vega, PowerNation, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Tanked, Diesel Brothers, Monster Garage with Jesse James, and The Lifted Life.

The news side surprised me more. I end up on FOX News, CNN, MSNBC and CNBC talking business, and I have been written up in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Inc., Entrepreneur, Jalopnik and a stack of others. SEMA Magazine put me on a list of the Top 35 Entrepreneurs in America Under 35, which still sounds strange to say out loud.

2022

Love You, Ralphie

In 2022 I co-produced Love You, Ralphie, an award-winning special about the comedian Ralphie May, my best friend. It is the first film anyone made about him, and the only thing on this page that has nothing to do with horns. I did it for him.

Visit ralphiemay.com (opens in a new tab)

2026

Come What May

There is a new film about Ralphie out now. Come What May follows the whole story, from the Houston comedy clubs to Last Comic Standing to the years on the road, and it does not skip the parts that were harder than people knew. Keeping his name alive is something I will always make time for. If you want to understand who he really was, go see it.

Visit comewhatmayfilm.com (opens in a new tab)

The first commercial

This is one of the first commercial style videos HornBlasters ever made. Me, showing off the warehouse, back when the whole operation was a lot smaller. It felt like a big deal at the time. Honestly, it still kind of does.

If the video will not play in your browser, open the video file directly.

Some of the people I’ve met

HornBlasters

Still the day job.

Train horns, air horns, onboard air, and the compressors that run them. Twenty-four years in and I still like it as much as I did the day I built the first kit. If you came here to get loud, that is the place.

Visit hornblasters.com (opens in a new tab)

Matt Heller in front of a wall of stacked Outlaw train horn boxes, a chrome horn over his shoulder.

Find me here

Off the clock

Tampa has been good to me, so I try to give some of it back. I have put in time as Vice President of the Young Adult Division at the Tampa Jewish Community Centers and Federation, and as President of Crystal Springs Colony Farms.