Family feud ends over late San Antonio-area truck dealership magnate’s more than $100M estate

A long-running court fight over the late trucking dealership magnate W. Marvin Rush II’s estate has come to an end. A Guadalupe County Probate Court judge signed off on a settlement this month in the tussle over assets amassed by Rush, the founder of New Braunfels-based Rush Enterprises Inc. He died at 79 in 2018 after a battle with Lewy body dementia. The dispute pitted Rush’s eldest son — Rush Enterprises Chairman, CEO and President W.M “Rusty” Rush III, 64 — against Marvin’s widow — third wife Barbara Rush, 62. At stake was ownership of Marvin Rush’s shares in Rush Enterprises and his interest in a partnership that held millions more in the company’s shares. Based on a valuation late last year, they represented about $87 million of his $112.4 million estate.

Rusty Rush had questioned his father’s mental capacity in executing new wills that removed Rusty as a beneficiary. Barbara Rush said her husband was of sound mind when he signed the new wills and that Rusty was simply making a money grab. Marvin Rush founded Rush Enterprises with a GMC truck franchise in 1965 and took it public in 1996. Today, it operates more than 125 Rush Truck Centers in 23 states. It turned a record $241.4 million profit on $5.1 billion in revenue last year. The company’s market value, based on its two classes of stock, is about $5.3 billion. Rusty had argued for more than six years that his father agreed to give him roughly 680,000 Class B shares in Rush Enterprises and his nearly 40 percent interest in 3MR Partners L.P. — which owns about 4.5 million Class B shares. That was memorialized in Marvin’s 2006 will. Barbara countered that her husband of 26 years revoked that will when he made a new one in May 2013 and again in November 2013. Neither of those wills contain a specific bequest of those assets. So she has said they became part of Marvin’s residuary estate — of which she is the sole beneficiary.