Employee Spotlight on Brent Miller, Sales Engineer
Lakeland’s Sales Engineer for North Dakota and NW Minnesota
This month’s employee spotlight features Brent Miller, Sales Engineer and Outside Sales Manager based out of North Dakota. Brent has been with Lakeland for nearly five years. During this time he has been a great asset to the organization and has formed lasting relationships within his sales territory.
Brent graduated from Moorhead High School in 2003 and received his degree in mechanical engineering from North Dakota State University in 2007. Brent worked at Rosemount with the Emerson Process Management group. “I worked with remote seals designed to go into some of the more difficult industrial applications,” explained Brent. “Being able to see customer installations and how Rosemount was a part of major food, chemical and industrial processing was fascinating and translated well into the industrial work I do at Lakeland.” Before joining the Lakeland team, Brent was working in the field as a design engineer on road graders.
“I Enjoy Looking in My Pantry and Seeing My Customers”
With interests in problem solving and manufacturing efficiency, Brent uses these to apply solutions to customer applications, utilizing Lakeland’s components and services. “I enjoy looking in my pantry and seeing my customers,” said Brent. “I grew up in Moorhead and moved back in 2012 after five years in Minnetonka, MN. This job has taught me how much industry is in the Fargo/Moorhead area in particular and my territory as a whole. The web of customers to get food to our pantries is amazing. Lakeland has customers that make the food, make the packaging equipment, till the land, treat the seed, store the grain, and many 
other strands of this web.”
In addition to providing top of the line customer service, Brent will also be the first person to talk hunting and hockey on the side! Brent played hockey in high school and college so when he moved to Minnetonka, coaching hockey was a natural fit. “I spent 5 years coaching the Squirt A team in Minnetonka and loved that experience,” exclaimed Brent. “When I moved back to Moorhead, I began coaching my oldest and have for the last 3 years and my youngest during his first season,” said Brent. He also spends the summer coaching baseball for both boys.
The Go-To Connection for Any Application
Brent strives to ensure that each customer receives the best solutions and services for their unique needs. He shared a story that stood out to him regarding a customer in the beet industry. “Beet pilers operate fast and furious during harvest time in the Red River Valley,” explained Brent. “Beet trucks dump their beets into the machine. They have a long conveyor boom swinging back and forth while moving backward on a long cement slab. To adjust how far the boom can swing each direction, operators had to crawl under the machine in mud, water and beet juice to adjust a limit switch. I found an arc sensor to measure the angle of swing digitally. I then supplied the customer with a controller that would display the current value, the set point and had a relay out to stop the swing. This controller was easy to adjust from on top of the machine. We worked with a local integrator to get the panel completed and installed the first prototypes with one of the Ag Operations Managers at the customer site.” Working toward a solution and connecting the dots between customers, suppliers and integrators is a regular occurrence for Brent.
Family Time, Cooking and Hunting
Before deciding to go into the engineering field, Brent aspired to attend culinary school. “I chose engineering school because owning a restaurant would take me away from family life,” explained Brent when discussing his personal hobbies and interests. “I decided that I would cook good food for my family. I love to cook! I do all of the grocery shopping and cooking in our house.”
Brent has been married for 12 years and has 3 kids; 7, 5 and 1. “I spend time hunting and fishing on my own and with my sons,” said Brent. “I love to pheasant hunt in North Dakota and Minnesota along with deer and ducks as well. My parents have had a lake cabin nearby Moorhead since before I was born, so this has been a summer staple for me. I also enjoy managing our hunting land for wildlife habitat. We have planted new native prairie and over 10,000 trees out there to improve our food and cover. Now we are figuring out what nutrition is missing and trying to add this to our area to support game and nongame species.”
Lakeland is lucky to have a personable, knowledgeable and all-around good guy on our team. Brent covers the North Dakota and NW Minnesota territory. To get in touch with Brent today, contact him at bmiller@lakelandengineering.com.