Ever wonder what happens after you call MillerTech or place an order? In this video, Rick from our team walks through our headquarters in Middlefield, Ohio, with Lester Miller, Founder of MillerTech. From the phones to the repair lab to the loading docks, here’s a look at how we design, build, service, and ship the products you count on.
Where Your Call Goes
The tour starts in tech support. When you call MillerTech with a technical question or a sales question, this is the room that picks up. The people in these offices are the ones who help you solve your problem. Just down the hall is Roman’s office. If you’ve ever had a technical question or a warranty claim, there’s a good chance you’ve talked with Roman. He takes care of all of that for us.
A Showroom You Can Visit
We don’t have a retail store, but we keep one of each product in our showroom. People stop in from all over the US, and from many other countries too. We like having products out where visitors can see them, touch them, and look them over in person.
Made in Our Own Production Area
Our production area builds many of our lighting products and battery-powered products for the Amish community, including items we convert from electric to run on DeWalt and Milwaukee tool batteries.
Some of our hardest workers here are production 3D printers. They run day and night, all year long. As each part cools, a belt moves it forward and drops it into a tote, so the printers keep making parts without anyone standing over them.
Designed in House
Dan, one of our Research and Development (R&D) specialists, creates the 3D and CAD drawings for our batteries and new products. On the tour, he gave a quick peek at a new battery design that hasn’t been released yet. We’re keeping the details quiet for now.
The point is that we design our batteries ourselves. We don’t put our name on someone else’s battery. That’s a big part of why we can put a 10-year warranty on our Sport Series batteries and stand behind it.
Batteries Built to Be Repaired
The battery repair and testing room is where Lester says MillerTech really stands out. On the bench during the tour was a battery that had just had its Battery Management System (BMS) replaced. The old BMS was corroded, most likely because the boat flooded and the battery sat underwater too long.
We can make that kind of repair because every MillerTech battery has a lid that opens and closes again. A rubber gasket seals it, and the battery is rated IP67. Those reclosable lids took expensive molds, but they let us open a battery, fix it, and send it back out, often within a day. It doesn’t matter how old the battery is. A bad cell or a bad BMS, we can usually fix it.
The same room has our cycle-testing stations. When new batteries come in, we run them through cycle tests to verify the cells are good. Lester says one charge-and-drain test isn’t enough to judge a battery. “You cannot really test a battery with one cycle,” he says. Our machines can run 500 cycles on their own, and that data shows what kind of cells are really inside.
From Our Shelves to Your Boat
Our 12,000 sq ft warehouse holds about 1,500 pallets of product. That lets us stock up ahead of the spring rush, so batteries are ready when you want to get out and fish.
To fit that much into a small space, we use an Aisle Master, a forklift with an articulating front end. It works in aisles just 6½ feet wide and reaches 26 feet high. Lester looked at robotic systems, but he chose a skilled operator instead. “Some days I feel like too much technology in machines can be a hindrance,” he says. It’s been fast and efficient for us.
When a dealer orders a pallet of batteries, order pickers load a cart for that dealer, and the order is wrapped on a turntable. We use a layer of black wrap first, then heavy-duty clear stretch wrap on top. A pallet of 20 batteries can be worth around $20,000, so an extra $10 of wrap to keep it safe is easily worth it. On average, we ship 15 to 20 pallets a day, mostly with R+L Carriers.
Smaller orders go to the UPS packing station. Each box gets the products, instruction manuals, and a few free goodies. Battery orders can include high-quality parallel cables for connecting two 12V batteries. If you order something small, like a headlamp, it goes out with USPS.
A Few Extras
We also have a laser engraver, run by Tyler, who knows the machine inside and out. We use it to make gifts for the anglers we sponsor, like mugs with our logo and headlamps engraved with each angler’s name. It’s a small way to say thank you.
And when it’s time for a break, there’s a lunchroom with a ping-pong table. The games get pretty competitive some days.
Come See for Yourself
Everything on this tour comes back to one thing: being able to stand behind what we sell. We design our batteries here, test them here, repair them here, and ship them from here.
Have a question about something you saw? Call 855-MAX-LITH (855-629-5484), email [email protected], or visit millertechenergy.com.