Ed note: With Veterans Day this Thursday, we profile engineer Brandon Collier, a member of the U.S. Marine Corps.
To celebrate all U.S. veterans in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, we want them to know they are appreciated. This is, we offer discounts from MSRP on any bike or frameset and give FREE shipping benefits to bikes that are on sale. Call or live chat with our team at any time to take advantage of this offer- exclusive to our veterans.
In 2003, a young Collier was like many young men—bored with town life in Lenoir City, Tenn., and itching for some adventure.
“I had a favorite uncle in the Army and it’s like everyone; you have this whole war movie thing where ‘I’m gonna go do that and become an American hero.’ I felt like that, but I was also a kid too, so it’s easy for guys to feel that way.” He was scheduled to meet with an Army recruiter—who didn’t show for the duo’s appointment. A Marine Corps recruiter was across the hall, he struck up a conversation, and his path was set: he would become a U.S. Marine.
Collier started the Marines in military occupational specialty, with roles from welding and metalworking to repair of engineering equipment. For Collier, it was utilities, and he soon transitioned into engineering. He put that trained skillset to work on his first and second deployments to Iraq, where he did road repairs where improvised explosive devices had created craters in the road, along with building and reinforcement of bridges.
“I’ve always been a bit of a MacGuyver person, always wanted to be able to fix things myself, or create a bypass,” he says. “In Iraq, it was that; we’d set up a cordon around a repair area with security, and we’d alternate between repairs and patrols.”
Collier left the Marines, returning to Chattanooga, Tenn. and faced a new challenge: finding work. He worked for the City of Chattanooga for a few years, but, as he says, “I decided I wanted to do more, to work in the actual engineering side of things.”
As it is for many in the military, transition back to the private sector was a rough one.
“It was tough—I tell my wife and she doesn’t believe it, but I went through a couple of rough spots, and if it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t be working here right now,” he says. With his wife’s encouragement, he returned to school to flesh out his engineering degree. With new experience in robotics, he transitioned to another job—before a chance with Litespeed’s parent company, American Bicycle Group, awaited in 2018.
There, he began working with designer Brad DeVaney, and the two have become a dynamic duo, bouncing concepts and ideas off one another to see what’s worth bringing to the fore.
“When I applied here, it sounded like a great opportunity. I love creating solutions,” he says. When asked if he has to corral the ebullient DeVaney into more practical solutions on bikes, he said it’s quite the opposite. “Working with Brad has been great; I’ll come up with some off-the-wall ideas, and he’s the one that actually tamps me down.”
His work is as detailed as it gets, and it shows in so many of the bikes in the Litespeed fleet.
"There was a lot of work on the design end of the Pinhoti III," Collier says. "Overcoming tire clearance on a bike with such short chainstays was a cool challenge. Same on the Watia, another bike I'm proud of, working out the integrated cable routing on a bike with the plated chainstay. They're subtle design cues, but that's what I'm charged with creating solutions for."
Today, Collier stays busy designing the newest bikes, while always remembering where he came from. And often, it takes him past a memorial, erected for 4 Marines and a sailor that were killed in 2015 in Chattanooga by a homegrown terrorist. The place along the Tennessee Riverwalk is called the Wreath of Honor Fallen Five Memorial.
“The Marine Corp’s birthday is November 10th, the day before Veterans Day, so anytime I see a fellow Marine that day, I say happy birthday,” Collier says. “But any other day, there’s a run that I do from the office, and it takes me past the Reserve Center here in town, where there’s a monument to when a guy drove in and killed 4 Marines and one Navy sailor. It’s a nice memorial and if I run nearby at lunch, I run by the memorial. I pay my respects where I can and try to be humble.”
Once a Marine, always a Marine.
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