I noticed it last spring on a three-story condo re-roof in Nassau. My crew was hauling the compressor up 40 feet of scaffolding—again—while the crew next door just climbed up, clipped a tool on their belt, and started nailing. No hose. No roar. No wasted time. They were done with the ridge cap while we were still untangling lines. That’s when it hit me: every professional roofer I trust has already made the switch. They don’t even argue about it anymore. Once you run a coil nailer without a compressor, you never go back. And if you’re still dragging that dinosaur up a ladder, you’re not just working harder—you’re getting left behind.
The Milwaukee 2909-20 is a bare tool — no battery, no charger. If you're already on the M18 platform (and most contractors I know are), you just grab your existing batteries and go. It drives 15-degree wire coil roofing nails from ¾" to 1¾". That covers your standard 1¼" roofing nail for asphalt shingles and the shorter nails for repairs.
The nail capacity is 120 nails per coil, which is standard. You're not reloading more than you would with a pneumatic. The sequential and bump fire modes are both there — bump fire for when you're flying through a section, sequential for precision work around valleys and flashing.
The Compressor Problem It Solves
Here's what nobody tells you about roofing compressors: they're not just heavy. They vibrate. They leak. They trip breakers. I've wasted more hours than I can count tracking down a homeowner's exterior outlet that actually works, running extension cords, and fixing hose blowouts mid-job.
The Milwaukee M18 FUEL roofing nailer eliminates all of that. No compressor. No hose. No cord. You walk up the ladder with the nailer and a pocket full of coils. That's your entire setup.
For repair jobs — a few bundles of shingles on a patch, a small porch roof, a shed — it's a game-changer. You're in and out in the time it used to take just to set up the compressor.
Where It Actually Performs
The M18 FUEL motor delivers consistent driving power. Milwaukee claims it matches pneumatic performance, and from what I've seen, it's close. The first nail and the hundredth nail drive the same depth. No ramp-up, no sponginess like you get with a compressor that's cycling.
The dry-fire lockout stops the tool before you fire blanks into your shingles — a small thing that saves you from the "did I miss a spot?" inspection walk. The tool-free stall release is also practical. When a jam happens (and on a roof, it always does), you clear it without reaching for a hex key.
Battery life: an M18 XC5.0 battery will drive roughly 500 nails on a charge. That's about four coils. For a full re-roof you'll want spare batteries, but for repairs and small jobs, one battery gets it done.
Where Pneumatic Still Wins
I'm not going to pretend cordless beats pneumatic on every job. If you're nailing 30 squares of architectural shingles on a steep pitch, a pneumatic nailer with a dedicated compressor is still faster. You're not stopping to swap batteries. The tool is lighter. And at $449 for the bare tool, you could buy a solid pneumatic setup — nailer, compressor, hose — for less money.
But here's the thing: most roofing contractors aren't only doing full re-roofs. You do repairs. You do small additions. You do porches and garages and sheds. For those jobs, the cordless setup saves you an hour of setup and teardown every time. That hour is money.
The Bottom Line
The Milwaukee M18 FUEL Coil Roofing Nailer at $449 bare tool is a serious tool for contractors who already run M18 batteries. It's not replacing your pneumatic on the big jobs — it's replacing your compressor on the small ones. And if you're like me, the small jobs are what fill the gaps between the big ones.
If you're already in the M18 ecosystem and you do any amount of roofing repair work, this tool pays for itself in setup time alone within a month. If you're not on M18, factor in the battery cost before you pull the trigger — but the platform is worth investing in regardless.
This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I'd actually use on a job site.
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