When Brett Anderson left the propeller shop at Mercury Racing to start his own business, BBlades Professional Propellers in Princeton, Wis., the first thing he did was develop a loaner-prop program.
To sell Hill Marine propellers to a global audience, Ron Hill started using eBay. Today, sales on the Santa Ana, Calif. company’s website make up a significant part of the company’s income.
At FJ Propeller in southeast Florida, Jimmie Harrison has a separate machine shop to make shafts, rudders and other hardware for inboard-powered boats.
When Randy Hale III decided to go into business for himself at Hale Propeller in Old Saybrook, Conn., he developed the Hale MRI, a machine that scans a propeller and provides a full set of specifications to repair it or create a new one. Echoing the strategies of all these companies, Hale says, “We’re a technology shop more than a prop shop.”
Modern aftermarket propeller companies have evolved in myriad ways to remain successful. Some have added fabricating capabilities for additional parts, while others are working on props for niche boats. Still, the heart of the business remains fixing bent prop blades to get the customer back on the water as soon as possible.
Self-Taught
Hale was 19 when he walked into Essex Machine Works, a propeller repair shop in Essex, Conn. He started out grinding and finishing repaired propellers. “Within a year and a half, I was the shop foreman, and I became more interested in high-speed stuff,” he says.
One company that Essex Machine worked with was Rolla Propellers, based in Switzerland. Hale visited the Rolla facility for training. When he returned, he went into business for himself. With his father, Randy Hale Jr., who was semiretired from the medical field, he formed Hale Propeller. The younger Hale did the physical work and deliveries, while his dad handled the office and sales. Randy III would repair propellers from 3 a.m. until hitting the road at 9 a.m. to pick up props that needed work, and to deliver repaired wheels to customers.
Today, repairs make up 80% of Hale Propeller’s annual revenue, which ranges from $2 million to $4 million. New-prop sales make up the other 20%. Hale carries products from Veem, which is based in Australia; Michigan Wheel; the United Kingdom’s CJR Propulsion and others.
The company is in an 11,000-square-foot facility, and Hale is one of six full-time employees. “Every day, I can either be drawing CAD files or I can be sanding propellers,” he says.
Hale taught himself how to use CAD equipment. More recently, he has been 3D-printing parts, but he’s best known for developing a propeller scanning machine called the Hale MRI. He came out with it in 1998 and has built machines to measure propellers up to 200 inches in diameter. The Hale MRI has an arm that rolls across a propeller blade multiple times, capturing data that is fed into a computer. It records pitch, rake, track, angular spacing, section face camber and other geometric features. It can also compare propellers for left- or right-hand rotation so sets can be custom-matched.
Hale says more than 150 repair shops worldwide use the MRI, and the sales and service of the equipment make up about 25% of his overall business. He’s working on a new, more portable version of the equipment. He also wants to bring robotics into the business because, as with every other branch of the marine industry, finding help remains a challenge. “Within the next two years, we will be robotic,” Hale says. The biggest challenge for a repair shop versus a new-prop manufacturer, he adds, is that the latter programs robots to produce units in volume, while the former must have the system reprogrammed for each job.
Because of supply-chain issues that create longer wait times on new props, Hale is repairing wheels that he might have previously replaced. “We repair stuff that many shops wouldn’t because the bends are too big or they’re close to the hub,” Hale says. “I tell the insurance company, ‘It should be replaced, but we’ll fix it to get them going again.’ ”
One thing that sets apart Hale Propeller is a spreadsheet that Hale and his father came up with so they could give an estimate over the phone. “If an insurance company or marina calls, I can tell them about what the price would be,” Hale says. For example, the cost to repair a seven-blade, 50-inch propeller is approximately $4,500. “Sometimes, I end up on the losing end if it takes longer to fix,” he says, but overall, the business balances out.
Going Mobile
Founded in 1947, Frank & Jimmie’s Propellers (now FJ Propellers) has long been a fixture in southeast Florida boating, performing repairs and selling new equipment. The company is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale and has a machine shop in Miami. Owner Jimmie Harrison has an interest in other shops listed on the company’s website with the exception of FJ Midwest, which recently split off and is now run as Hering Propellers.
That split was beneficial for FJ Propeller because, Harrison says, FJ Propellers has strong ties with Mercury and Mercury Racing, and Hering makes props for go-fast boats. In other words, they’re competitors.
“We’re a Mercury dealer, and the heart of our business is repairs,” Harrison says. “I have a separate shop doing nothing but high-performance propellers, including a lot of raceboat stuff.”
Harrison estimates that his business is split 50-50 between new propeller sales and repairs. The new sales are mostly inboards. Harrison says FJ is the largest Michigan Wheel distributor, and the company works with Veem and CJR Propulsion.
For repairs, FJ Propeller uses MRI as well as Prop Scan equipment, and Harrison says his company has stepped up its technology game with a new portable scanner. Creaform is a Quebec-based company that has a portable scanner called the HandyScan Black. It uses lasers to extract a propeller’s specifications so an exact duplicate can be created.
“We can go to the boatyard and scan the prop while it’s on the boat,” Harrison says. “It’s expensive to take the props off and cart them into a shop and do the measuring. A big job we got last week was some 4.72-inch [120mm] shafts and a propeller. That’s $100,000 for one ticket.”
Harrison says FJ’s annual revenue in 2021 was $9.5 million, and those numbers were exceeded in 2022. The company has 50 employees at its two locations, with Fort Lauderdale covering 12,000 square feet and Miami, 13,000. Both locations take in propellers, but the repairs are done in Fort Lauderdale, while Miami does all the shaft work and fabrication of parts such as struts or rudders. FJ Propellers can machine shafts up to 6 inches in diameter and propellers up to 80 inches in diameter. The average-size prop the company works on is about 40 inches.
FJ Propellers’ work has also changed with industry trends. Smaller inboard boats have been replaced by center consoles and dayboats with multiple outboards. The aluminum-propeller repair market went away years ago.
Testing, Testing
Anderson was working in the propeller department at Mercury Racing under the tutelage of Dennis Cavanaugh, an acknowledged propeller genius. Cavanaugh suffered a fatal accident, and Anderson was suddenly at the helm of the Mercury Racing propeller division.
He stayed at Mercury Racing until Anderson and a minority partner, Robert Lucht, who was also working at the company, decided to start BBlades.
When he started working at Mercury, Anderson took advantage of the company’s propeller loaner program. He had a 17-foot Checkmate with a 135-hp
Mercury outboard and enjoyed trying different propellers. An employee could borrow a propeller for the weekend as long as some data came back with it.
“I always thought it was the coolest thing,” Anderson says. “When I started BBlades, I said, ‘We’re going to have a test program, and we’re going to do it right.’ ”
In the BBlades program, a customer rents a prop for $55 for 15 days. If you damage the prop, you buy it. Otherwise, if a customer wants to keep the propeller, the rental fee is deducted from BBlades brand models. “The props sell themselves because we only send out stuff that we think is going to work or improve performance,” Anderson says.
BBlades sells its own designs along with new props from Mercury, Hydromotive Engineering, Hering, Signature Propellers and Turbo. The company also offers customization that most people would consider “lab-finishing,” a service that Mercury Racing used to offer to owners of custom high-performance boats and racing teams.
“Our goal was to be the best custom facility in the country,” Anderson says. BBlades’ headquarters is a 9,000-square-foot facility with five to nine employees. “We make more on the customization and repairs than we do on new props,” he says.
Like his contemporaries, Anderson says that getting new product from other prop companies is a big challenge. Another uphill battle is the new center consoles and dayboats powered by four or five outboards. “When a guy calls and he needs multiple propellers, we don’t have that many in stock,” Anderson says. “In the past, we had an advantage because we’re 30 miles from Mercury. When someone called and we didn’t have it in stock, we could have it in a day.”
Because of his experience designing and shaping props, Anderson can keep BBlades flexible. “Right now, we have six of our own designs, and we took two of those and turned them into two more designs,” Anderson says.
Expanding its offerings, BBlades has propeller locks for Yamaha and Evinrude outboards, Mercury Racing Number Six, M8 and NXT drives, Mercury outboards and MerCruiser Bravo Three sterndrives. BBlades also makes quarter-inch billet aluminum spacers for Number Six, Bravo and Bravo Sportmaster drives, and has a loaner program for the spacers, as well.
The eBay Master
The father-and-son team of Ron and Chad Hill has been involved in powerboat racing and propeller design since the 1960s. Chad was also the youngest Formula One tunnel-boat driver at age 19. Ron retired from public-school teaching after 38 years, and Chad, who was also a teacher, decided to quit and join his dad in the new venture.
Their line of Signature propellers was popular among go-fast enthusiasts, especially on the West Coast. The company had some financial challenges in 2001, and Ron decided to start selling props on eBay. “When I first got on eBay, there were less than 1,000 props, and 200 of them were ours,” Ron says. “Last year, we sold about $300,000 worth of propellers on eBay.”
Hill Marine made 7,000 propellers last year and sells factory-direct around the world. The company rented half of its 12,000-square-foot building 19 years ago and started casting its own propellers; today, the Hills own the property and employ 16 people.
Recently, the Hills started 3D-printing props. Primarily, the company sticks with making props for more mainstream sterndrives and outboards. “We developed our props for the Yamaha 4-strokes about 10 years ago, and we’ve done a good job on the Bravo Three,” Ron says. The company’s Four by 4 set consists of two four-blade props designed to improve overall performance of a boat powered by a Bravo Three sterndrive.
Hill Marine also delves into some interesting niches. The company makes about 100 propellers a year for high-performance V-drive boats and sells about 400 a year for mud boats. They’re flat-bottom skiffs that can travel in inches of water and are powered by air-cooled outboards that are usually run with a tiller. One of the biggest manufacturers in the genre is Mud Buddy in Utah, and Hill Marine is an OEM supplier to to the builder.
Hill always makes sure the customer comes first. “I’ve always sold propellers like puppy dogs,” he says. “Take it home, and if you don’t like it, bring it back in two weeks and let’s talk.” And that’s no spin.
This article was originally published in the April 2023 issue.
