11-27-08
In 2004, the Wheeldock™ Co. was formed. In its first
year of business, Wheeldock™ offered one product:
the original Wheeldock™ wheel chock. This product
was invented and developed by the owner and founder
of the company, Rod Brakhage, and his buddy Mike
Lyons. In 2005, a patent was granted for the this
product (Pat. #7,150,359). Before founding the
Wheeldock™ Co., the owner Rod was employed by
Oklahoma State University for 23 years. During this
period, he built all the hardware required to
support research projects for the College of
Engineering, Architecture, and Technology.
Originally the Wheeldock™ Co. outsourced the wheel
chock to another company for manufacturing and
shipping. This product was primarily marketed by
showing it at rallies and was advertised in a few
magazines. After the first year, it became obvious
that the wheel chock was not just a great design,
but there was a large market for this type of
product. Sales were so good in fact; the company
which manufactured the product for Wheeldock™ had
trouble keeping up with orders. Therefore, the owner
decided to make the investment necessary to start
manufacturing the wheel chock in house. Because the
owner’s background was in tool and die work, he
built all new tooling and the precision fixtures
needed for manufacturing the Wheeldock™ wheel chock.
He leased and set up a small manufacturing shop and
was ready for business. In the first week of January
2005, Wheeldock™ shipped the first wheel chocks,
which were built entirely by Wheeldock™ employees.
One year later, the company was at full speed and
needed more space for production. On April 1, 2006,
the company moved into its current plant, which is a
new 8,000 sq. foot, custom built, facility complete
with a state-of-the-art powder coating operation.
The Wheeldock Co is located at 502 Kinnick Rd in
Stillwater, Oklahoma.
The EZ-Up™ center stand was developed in the fall of
2006 to address continued requests from Harley
owners for this product. Recently the owner went
back to the drawing board when Harley decided to
improve the frame for the ’09 models. The Wheeldock™
company now builds an EZ-Up™ center stand for the
new ‘09 Harleys in two heights as well as the
original EZ-Up™ stand for 1979-2008 Harleys in four
heights.
In the fall of 2008, another 2,500 sq. feet was
added to the plant for R&D. This new shop facility
is where Rod loves to hang out with his machine
tools designing and developing new products and
building fixtures and tooling for current products.
This addition allows the company to take any new
product from concept to completion.
Another part of the business involves custom powder
coating for companies such as Kicker Car Stereo,
Ridley Motorcycle Co. Mercury Marine, and others.
We at Wheeldock™ are very proud of the fact that we
are still manufacturing our products here in the
USA. And, all of our products carry a limited
lifetime warranty to be free of defects in materials
and workmanship.
In this day and time, a lot of companies focus on
how cheaply a product can be made (usually in a
foreign country) and then sold for the most profit
possible. At Wheeldock™, we believe in building a
great product in the US, sell it at a fair price,
and then provide great service after the sale. We
believe this simple philosophy is why we have been
successful and what every company should be built
around. Our toll free number is posted at the top of
every page on our site, and we encourage our
customers to call with any questions or comments, or
complaints. We encourage you to take a few minutes
and read what some of our customer’s think of our
products and services here:
http://wheeldock.com/testimonials.shtml
