American Made Since Day One
Article And Photos By: Paul Wideman www.bareknucklechoppers.com
Originally Published In The June 2013 Issue Of Cycle Source Magazine
One of the truly great American stories is that of the man who is his own boss; doing what he loves for a living. Actually, that may be the great American story. What could be better? To get up every morning knowing that your day will be filled with watching your ideas come to life, getting to turn the handles on machines you’ve known longer than your wife or kids, and to an extent, knowing you are in charge of your future, should all fill a person with pride and great happiness. Of course there are mountains of stress in each and every day, but for many, the reward far outweighs any downside. The business owner that is fully content with nurturing a passion into an income, and eventually a business, is seldom the business owner that employs questionable ethics, offers poor employee conditions, or ships products unfit for the consumer. This same entrepreneur also sees the benefit of keeping jobs right here in the U.S. You see, this small business owner lives amongst all of us. He shops where we shop. His kids go to school with yours. He’s one of us, and he knows we need our jobs. But that’s not his only reason for holding a strict made in USA policy; his passion cannot be compromised by inferior imported products just to save a few bucks. Such is the story of Mittler Brothers Machine & Tool.
Mittler Brothers was founded in 1980 by Mike and Paul Mittler. But the formation of Mittler Bros. was not a long planned and carefully calculated ordeal. Mike was guided by his father into engineering, but Mike was always a racer. He spent his spare time in and around the local St Louis race shops. One such place was Fran’s Chassis Engineering. Here, Mike spent five years learning as much as possible about every kind of race car he could. As Fran put it, “We do it for the fumes: the exhaust fumes and the perfumes.” We all know what that means. Being the young and hungry soul that he was, Mike looked around for more work, eventually landing a night job at Astro Engineering. Mike worked the nightshift, and before long was running the entire shop. He built up the shop’s credibility, customer base, and employee count. He even hired his younger brother, Paul. It was shortly after this, due to some differences with the absentee owner, Mike and Paul made the choice to part ways with Astro. The following day, Mittler Brothers Machine & Tool was born.
While spending their days doing job shop duty, the brothers would look forward to the nights when they could work on their pet projects. One product that Mike had worked on in the off hours during his early years was a hydraulic tubing notcher for use in chassis fabrication. Shortly after opening Mittler Bros., NASCAR driver, Rusty Wallace, saw the notcher and bought the second one that Mike and Paul completed. You can imagine how things snowballed after that. The next project was again for Rusty Wallace. There was a need for a better pit socket for the crews at the races, and Mike came up with a revolutionary design, using solid tool steel, that eliminated all the problems the early, homemade sockets were known for. At the very first race, the Wallace team used them. The crew was ecstatic, and they became far faster than all the other crews. An Ingersoll rep caught wind of them and bought the entirety of Mittler’s inventory right on the spot. This led the brothers to the very first Circle Track Speed Week Trade Show in 1981, which took place in a parking garage in Daytona during Speed Week. Here, Mittler Bros. showed off their innovations and built a solid name in the racing world. They have been to every trade show since that inaugural show in 1981, and it is still one of the biggest focal points of the entire year for them.
Over the last 33+ years, Mittler Bros. have designed and improved upon numerous fabrication tools, creating quite an impressive catalog. Every race shop you walk through in North Carolina will have multiple machines sporting the signature Mittler Bros. blue. Countless motorcycle shops use their benders, notchers, planishing hammers, English wheels, bead rollers, and many other timesaving, high quality pieces. For the fabricator, Mittler Bros. has it all. And at the core of all of this is the undying pride in American manufacturing. Innovation and efficiency are encouraged amongst the employees, and to aid in this, Mike recently developed a program that combines employee involvement and profit sharing. The program allows the worker on the floor to develop and implement new processes that improve quality and increase efficiency. At the end of the day, the guy or gal gets more than just a pat on the back; they get to realize a financial reward, and subsequently job security. This is not the kind of program you will find in any Chinese sweatshops. Mike is very proud of this program, and he is more than happy to give back to his faithful crew. They are a good bunch of people, and they all do an incredible job. To further promote efficiency, Mittler Bros. is at the point where nearly all work is done in-house. They don’t farm-out any machine work, and do all of their own sheet cutting in-house. Even media blasting and painting is handled all under the MB roof. Recently, they have gotten deep into the robotics arena, as many shops come to them for turn-key robotics projects. They build the entire platform, from hardware to software, even programming, delivery and setup.
Mittler Bros. currently employs 70 men and women, running two shifts every day. Oftentimes you will see the parking lot full on Saturdays. The world has a thirst for quality built fab tools, and these folks are always changing and adapting to quench those thirsts. As the world changes, so does the fabrication world. Mike and Paul strive to fill the voids before the voids actually present themselves. All the while, they are making the tools and machines available to the weekend warrior building his first modified, all the way up to each and every NASCAR shop, motorcycle chassis shop, and panel beater in the world. Cycle Source is proud to partner up with Mittler Brothers to help carry the made in the USA torch. Mike and Paul and the entire Mittler Brothers Machine & Tool crew believe in the same American manufacturing principles as we at Cycle Source believe. We are proud to have Mittler Bros. as our official fab tools’ sponsor. We will be highlighting a few of their various tools in the coming months in our regular tech articles. This may not look like a drastic change, as you have seen Mittler Bros. tools in many of our articles in the past. There is a reason for that: Mittler Bros. offers quality, American made tools at a very reasonable price. And that’s all because of the passion of two brothers and a great crew.
