Miller Service: The last of a dying breed

By Mark Ribble

LEAMINGTON — When the last bit of gas is pumped at Miller Service at the end of this month, it will be a wrap on Gary Miller’s 52-year career in the family business.

Miller Shell is closing its doors and the property has been sold. Gary Miller cannot share what the new owner’s plans are, but suffice to say it will no longer be a service station.

Gary’s father Mike Miller opened the business at 407 Talbot Street West in March of 1949.

In the beginning it was known as City Services, but everyone came to know it as Mike Miller Service Ltd.

For the first 68 years, Miller Service was contracted by Shell to sell their gasoline. For the past five years, they’ve been under contract with XTR Energy as an independent gas station.

Gary Miller in front of his service station on Wednesday, March 9.

SUN photo

What has been a constant over the years is the automotive service that the Millers provide, from oil changes to alignments to more complex repairs.

Gary says not much has changed with the basics, but a lot of cars are more complex.

Local families have patronized the business for generations and Gary has regular customers whose parents and grandparents were customers of his father.

The full service gas pumps out front represent something of that past, as only one other station in Leamington offers full service and that’s at a premium price.

Gary bought the busines from his dad in 1989 and added an additional two service bays to the side of the building. Mike hung around until about 2002, when he turned 80 and retired.

Gary has loads of memories of the family-run business that his father started before he was born, and although some stories aren’t printable, many are fond anecdotes of the various local characters who stopped in for service and may have joined in a card game or two.

“We had a guy whose wife sent him into town to buy the Christmas turkey,” says Miller. “He stopped here first and was dealt into an ongoing card game, where he lost his turkey money and had to return home without the bird.”

The man was forever known as “Turkey” after that.

Gary started working for his dad in 1970 and learned the business inside and out, becoming a mechanic and learning all of the tricks of the trade.

Gary Miller with the company ledger, complete with his father’s first entry in March, 1949.

Photo submitted

Over the years, he says he’s watched people heading to work each morning and also watched them head home after work, driving by the station.

“Yet here I was, still at work,” he laughs.

Mike often talked of watching a tornado in the 1950s as it ran along the farms below on old Highway 18.

“He said he saw farm equipment being picked up by the tornado along the way,” says Gary.

The old original building had a peaked roof and Gary says his dad told him that boats on Lake Erie often used Miller’s station as a landmark when the peaked roof was lit up at night.

Miller Service as it appeared in the 1950s and 1960s.

Photo submitted

Renovations eliminated the peaked roof when Gary took over the business in 1989.

The stories are plentiful as Gary reminisces about the years spent at the station.

“I had a guy pull up in a big Cadillac convertible one day with two German Shepherds in the back seat,” he says. “He was asking directions to an address on East Beach Road.

I asked him why he just didn’t call the person for directions and he said that they wouldn’t likely want to know he was coming.”

Miller Service has been involved in the community for many years, while sponsoring hockey teams, bowling teams and other sports along the way.

But in a couple of weeks, as business winds down to the end of an era, Gary Miller will take stock of his 52 years pumping gas and fixing vehicles and then dim those lights one last time, heading home and working on his hobby, which of course, is restoring classic vehicles.

And Leamington’s last old fashioned ‘fillin’ station’ will no longer be in operation.