Max Miller was the star pilot of the service, everybody who knew him loved him and he never passed on an attempt to fly the mail. That was ultimately his undoing. On September 1, 1920, while flying one of the new all-metal JL-6 monoplanes, the fuel system began to leak, as they often did in the JL-6, and the resulting fuel fire spread throughout the plane causing the plane to crash into a hillside in New Jersey. Max Miller and the mechanic flying with him, Gustav Rierson, were both killed. Miller’s flight log and the deed to his car were found in his jacket pocket. He is buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Washington D.C.