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By Robert Janis
High Lifter Helps Riders Get Down and Dirty
Jesse Johnson (r) and Randy Miller (l)
built the beast! It’s not finished…but
it’s well on it’s way. |
They say that necessity is the mother of
invention. In the case of Scott Smith and his
company High Lifter Products of Shreveport,
Louisiana, it led to a hobby becoming a major
business.
It all started in 1996. Scott Smith was an
ardent ATV mud rider. He was content to leave
that as a hobby while he jointly owned a
construction business with a partner.
Then, almost out of the blue, a major tire
company involved in the ATV trade came out with
a larger tire. The tire proved to be difficult
to put on Scott’s Honda 400 Foreman. So after
learning there were no ATV lift kits available,
Scott designed and constructed a 2-inch lift kit
for his Honda. The kit provided enough fender
clearance for him to put the larger tires on to
his ATV, and it also offered a little bit more
ground clearance so that his bike could run over
larger obstacles.
He went to a mud riding event with his newly
enhanced Honda and found that he could get
through more deep mud than his riding buddies.
“After the ride, everyone wondered what he had
done to be able to make it through the deep
mud,” explained Jason Coffel, marketing director
of High Lifter Products. “When Scott showed them
the lift kit, everyone asked him to make one for
them.” Being a good guy who didn’t want to
disappoint his buddies, he went on and
constructed lift kits for his buddies in a shop
in the backyard of his home. Soon friends of his
friends were requesting the kits and
constructing them became more of a chore. So
Scott asked to be paid a modest sum for the kits
to cover his time, expenses, purchasing of
parts, and the manufacturing process. Mud riders
just kept on coming to get more kits.
So Scott decided to run a small ad in the
local newspaper. People called and ordered the
kits. Then he put an ad in the Thrifty Nickel
newspaper in another part of Louisiana and more
and more people called and ordered the kits. The
calls reached such a volume Scott had to hire
someone to take the calls and orders. The order
taker became the first official employee of the
company that would become High Lifter Products.
High Lifter's
Complex |
After a year, things got too big for the
little shop in the backyard of the house. Scott
needed office and warehouse space for his
business. It so happened that about that time
the office adjacent to the construction business
became vacant. Scott took the space over, and it
became the warehouse for the hard building
materials Scott used to construct the lift kit
and High Lifter Products moved.
Both companies grew during the next few
years, and in 2001 a building was constructed
for each business across the street from each
other in another part of Shreveport.
According to Coffel, the High Lifter facility
is 21,000 square feet and includes a research
and development department as well as a
showroom, administrative offices, two
warehouses, and production or product assembly
capability.
Today High Lifter manufactures and or
markets, suspensions lift kits, shocks, exhaust
systems, carburetor kits, motor modifications,
pistons and cams, mud riding ATV locker kits,
tires and wheels, tire sealant, lights,
floorboards, skid plates, winches, and
accessories. The grounds on which the facility
sits also includes a mud pit for testing
equipment.
The heart of the business is the research and
development department. Charles Singleton is
director of the department. Two employees who
work in the shop doing customer installations
also do work in the research and development
department and also do some fabrication. Scott
and Mike and several others in the company also
participate in R&D and product design as well as
some fabrication. “Scott, Mike, Charles, and the
two guys who also work the shop are the heart
and soul of R&D,” said Coffel.
Polaris Ranger RZR…we call it Spiderman. |
According to Coffel, everything that High
Lifter Products has ever manufactured is based
on customer need. “The lift kit was created to
allow for larger tires and to go through deeper
mud and larger obstacles,” said Coffel. “After
the lift kit was created, even larger tires were
made. High Lifter designed and contracted for
manufacture the High Lifter Outlaw, the most
aggressive mud tire in the market. The larger
the tire, the more power the ATV has to generate
to turn the tires because the original stock
engine loses power. So you need to replenish the
power of the ATV, and you do that by enhancing
the engine performance. The evolution of the
company is kind of like the house that Jack
built. Everything goes back to the lift kit and
the larger tire.”
In order to do its business, High Lifter has
an ATV dynamometer. “We have the only ATV
dynamometer in this part of the country,” said
Coffel. “People drive from all parts of the
country to have a dyno run on their ATV to see
what can be done to enhance what they have.”
Coffel explained that the company selects an
ATV model, determines what it needs to perform
better, and then develops a product that
satisfies the need. “For example, we discovered
that at slow speed in deep mud, the Yamaha 660
Grizzly had an overheating issue,” said Coffel.
“So we designed and constructed a new radiator
for it called the Triple Flow Radiator. We offer
luxury-type products, but most of what we offer
are solution-type products.”
Coffel noted that some times manufacturers of
ATVs cooperate with High Lifter in the
development of products. “We have very close
relationships with some manufacturers, but not
with others,” said Coffel. “However, we have a
great network of customers and Team High Lifter
prostaff members who allow us to use their ATVs
to do R&D on. In exchange, they get the first
one off type product that they can go out and
field test.”
SuperTrapp Mud Bog |
The High Lifter customers and Team High
Lifter prostaff members who test product come
back to the company with a full report on how
the prototype worked.
In addition, the track on the premises of
High Lifter Products is used to test products.
Coffel noted that when the company developed a
disc brake system for Honda ATVs a few years
ago, a company employee used the track to put
over a thousand miles of stop-and-go riding on a
bike that had the disc brake system prototype.
“He ran on that Honda Foreman eight hours a day
just stopping and going and pressing those
brakes. That serves as an example as to how
thoroughly the company tests critical products
before they are released into the market.
Many products from High Lifter may take as
much as a year in R&D before they are released
to the public. “We want to make certain that the
products we sell are right and will hold up,”
commented Coffel.
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