Marshall Miller knew he wanted to be a geologist when he was a boy roaming the hills of Bluefield, West Virginia in search of new rocks to add to his collection.
Growing
up in a family of die-hard Mountaineer fans, he also made up
his mind early on that he would learn the fundamentals of his
chosen profession at West Virginia University.
"I knew early in life what I wanted to be and where I wanted to go," said Miller. That dogged determination—as solid as the rocks he studied—would make Miller one of the leaders in the environmental consulting and engineering field. As founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Marshall Miller & Associates, a multiservice firm with 190 employees in eight states, his is truly a WVU success story.
Miller obtained his bachelor's degree in geology in 1966 and was working on his master's degree when a year later he landed a job with Schlumberger Well Services as a geophysical engineer in the oil and gas fields of Illinois and Michigan.
During his two years with Schlumberger, he gained experience in geophysical wire-line logging, which consists of collecting data on subsurface rock strata and reservoirs from electrical probes.
In 1969 Miller took a position as a fuels geologist with the Virginia Division of Mineral Resources in Charlottesville. It was during this time that he familiarized himself with the coal industry's mineral exploration methods. He completed his master's degree at WVU in 1973.
By 1974 several national companies, including Shell Oil, were approaching him with lucrative job offers. Instead, he accepted a fuels geologist position with Pocahontas Land Corp. in Bluefield—at half the pay Shell was offering him.
"This job gave me an opportunity to stay close to home and be with my family," he said. "It was not as much salary, but it was home, and that was where I wanted to be."
During his two years with the company Miller learned that the coal easiest to mine had already been extracted and what was left had complex geological problems associated with it. He also became aware that conventional core drillings were missing and "washing out" the best quality "soft" coals. He was convinced that the geophysical wire-line logging techniques he had learned in the oil and gas fields would provide the coal industry with a more concise way to accurately measure coal underground.
Seeing a niche he could readily fill, Miller formed his own company in 1976 in Bluefield, Virginia. He immediately set about adapting wire-line logging for the coal industry and began selling major coal producers on his unique geological services.
"Through good geological practices and advanced geophysical wire-line techniques, we started to identify immediately more coal for these companies than they thought they had in the ground," Miller said. "It was an immediate success."
However, when the coal industry experienced a downturn in the early 1980s, Miller diversified, employing environmental professionals, creating a hydrology department, and purchasing a small oil and gas firm and a civil engineering company.
Today, about 55 percent of the company's business is in environmental and civil engineering services and 45 percent is in coal, oil, and gas consulting.
Marshall Miller & Associates is also a family business. His wife Sharon serves as corporate secretary and their daughter, Tracy, is assistant vice president of internal marketing and promotions. Meantime, his brother Frazier and a nephew, Buddy, are in charge of external communications.
It has been many years since Marshall Miller scoured the woods outside his Bluefield home, studying rocks and dreaming of being a successful geologist.
He has realized that dream and more in his 61 years. He has claimed honors ranging from a regional Entrepreneur of the Year award in 1993 to being inducted this year into the West Virginia Coal Hall of Fame housed at WVU. He has even found time to learn how to pilot a twin-engine plane.
"I have been very blessed," he said. "I can say that I have lived my dream. I don't think there is one thing I would have changed."