Get to know Propeller’s world-class team in our ongoing employee spotlight series. Today, we talk to Mike Scott, who serves as enterprise sales representative on the sales team. He’s based out of our Denver office.
What do you do at Propeller?
I am the central United States and Latin America sales rep for Propeller; I also manage dealers, from Komatsu, from Trimble, and others. I work with them to train, onboard, and, since this is really new technology, just really help them talk to customers. I make sure these people are all up to speed, so when a customer comes asking “What is this solution? What is Propeller?”, I can be a resource for them.
What’s your career background?
I was in school for a while. I went and got my master’s, during which I was working with a trucking company in Tennessee for about two years. They did over-the-road trucking, so your standard dry van, refrigerated trucking.
After moving back to Colorado, I started working with a construction trucking group. We helped manage on-site deliveries for construction projects. I helped develop a mobile app to track trucks delivering from aggregates facilities to the jobsite.
Before working at Propeller, what’s the strangest or most interesting job you’ve held?
The summer after I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, I knew I was going back to get my master’s and couldn’t start a full-time job at the time.
I was in Colorado for the summer and I ended up working as a bartender at night, during the day I’d climb in attics and blew in insulation. I worked at a bar above a concession stand in the middle of four baseball diamonds. So, if you want to talk about beer league softball, I was your beer-league bartender.
Where are you from? Where have you lived?
I think I’m one of the only Colorado natives here on the Propeller team. I grew up in Colorado Springs. I think I’m the third or fourth generation of my family to live in Colorado. My family is still down there, and now I’m just an hour north, here in Denver. I’m as local as it gets.
What’s your favorite Propeller memory?
I work with quite a few of the taconite mines up in Minnesota—and you think you know what big equipment looks like until you show up on a mine site like that and they crush your “big equipment” ideas immediately with some of their toys.
Favorite memory was being up on a jobsite with the Cliffs Mining folks, and just looking at these giant, three-story tall haul trucks moving 300 tons, getting loaded in three scoops by a giant Laterno loader—it was pretty incredible.
If you could be any piece of worksite equipment, what would you be and why?
That’s a tough one. This’ll probably play into my nickname, but I’ve self appointed myself as “Big Mike,” and so Big Mike would have to be a big dozer, like a D575A or like the world’s largest loader, which would be like a LeTourneau. One of those guys—big and bad.
If you could attend any professional sports game, what would it be and why?
Right now, it’s a Broncos Super Bowl, baby!
Do you have an office nickname? What is it?
After Christmas last year, I came back a few pounds heavier. As a joke, I gave myself the name “Big Mike,” like I said before, and it seems to have stuck around.
If you could do any job at Propeller or on a worksite for just one day, which would you choose?
You know, Propeller’s pretty fun, but I really like my job here, so I’d go on a worksite and be an equipment operator. I’d want to run a blade or a dozer on a civil site maybe even a large excavator on a mine.
Any fun facts or talents to share?
Fun facts, I’m chock full of them. My wife likes to call me “Mikelopedia.” India Pale Ale is called that because India used to be a British colony and the only way to get beer around the Horn of Africa and keep it fresh was to double hop it. So the colonizers living in India got a taste for double hopped beer. When they returned to England, they brought those tastes with them and called that kind of beer “India Pale Ale.”
Ah, but you meant a fun fact about me? I used to play baseball and almost led my team in hit batters, meaning I hit the most people while pitching—almost. It’s a fact, but definitely wasn’t fun for them.
