Made in Chicagoland: WeatherTech

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The Chicago area has already had a taste of winter weather. Many drivers are getting their cars ready for another snowy season. They are protecting the inside with a good set of floor mats.

One of the most popular makers is WeatherTech. It's a great American success story, made right here in Chicagoland.

WeatherTech has its floor mats, liners and other automotive products at the company's headquarters in Bolingbrook.

Founder and CEO David MacNeil said he started the business in 1989 out of necessity.

"I noticed that the floor mats that were available back in the 1980s were just these thin cheap rubber floor mats. They really didn't do what a floor mat is supposed to do," Mac Neil said.

He took out a second mortgage on his home and worked out of his house to create and sell a specialized, custom-fit floor mat. As the business grew, MacNeil bought facilities in Downers Grove and Bolingbrook.

WeatherTech is now a 400,000 square-foot factory where more than 500 workers make thousands of mats and liners every day.

The process begins with tiny resin pellets. They are vacuumed into overhead hoses and dropped into a hopper. Then they are dropped into a barrel, where they are heated to 420 degrees. The melted plastic is injected into a mold and the finished mat is packaged and shipped.

The floor liners are made a bit differently. Plastic sheets are loaded into a frame, heated in an oven and rotated into the molding area. The liners are cooled, trimmed and packaged in less than 40 seconds.

Since each mat and liner has to fit each specific model of car and truck, there are more than 20,000 molds.

WeatherTech has engineers, designers and product developers looking for the best ways to protect your car - inside and out.

For example, the WeatherTech BumpStep mounts on a trailer hitch to protect the bumper from damage.

MacNeil takes great pride in the fact that 100 percent of his products are made in America. A majority is made in Chicagoland.

"We build our tooling ourselves in Downers Grove. We do our own photography and film. We even cook our own food. We plow our own snow. We try to do everything right here, with American workers," MacNeil said.

Remember those Super Bowl commercials WeatherTech had? They are doing them again for the big game in 2015. Employees will produce the ads in their Chicagoland studios as well.