Rubber Factory received positive reviews and was the band's first album to chart on the Billboard 200 in the United States, reaching number 143.

"[5] For recording, the group used a mixing console that Carney purchased on eBay from a former sound technician for Canadian rock band Loverboy.

[13] The artwork is a collage of local features, mainly from the desolate east side of Akron: abandoned storefronts, tire piles, the Goodyear blimp, and even the Cathedral of Tomorrow's unfinished tower restaurant depicted as a smoke stack on the front of the album.

[14] James Hunter of The Washington Post said that the album "capitalizes richly on whatever it exactly was that caused the rock- and-roll commentariat to adopt [the band] in the first place as college-dropout makers of new indie-rock blues".

[17] In a three-star review, Christian Hoard of Rolling Stone described the album as "high-impact scuzz-blues that aims for prime Hendrix and almost gets there, thanks mostly to Dan Auerbach's thick-ass guitar lines", but said that it was missing fully formed songs.

[23] Jonathan Zwickel of Pitchfork gave the record an 8.3/10, writing that, "There's more of an album feel to Rubber Factory, a conscious song-by-song progression rather than the visceral, overwhelming vibe that forged their debut, The Big Come Up, into a seething wrecking ball.

[26] After the commercial success of their 2011 studio album El Camino, Rubber Factory re-entered the chart in May 2012, peaking at number 131.