Nils started his professional engineering career as a liaison engineer for Delta Airlines, spending 10 years with the company. As a side project that evolved out of his passion for motor sports, Nils launched Young Engineering to design and build Formula Ford racing cars. His first design, a prototype car, incorporated a number of innovative features such as adjustable suspension and advanced aerodynamics. Construction of the car was well underway when the 1974 worldwide energy crisis led to the banning recreational use of gasoline and effectively halted auto racing.

To keep Young Engineering afloat – and pay his shop rent – Nils sought other business opportunities. He took on a variety of “one-off” engineering projects, such as fabricating aluminum hydrogen vent lines for testing the Saturn V rocket engines, screen filters for latex paint production, a truck unloader for bark chips, and others. One of these projects was the opportunity to design a gearbox for a large sewage treatment plant.  Having no previous experience with these type of gearboxes, Nils quickly arrived at a solution that was economically fabricated and easily installed.

The customer was so pleased with the performance of the first drive units that they promptly ordered a second batch. With that order in hand, Nils officially launched DBS Manufacturing to specialize in designing and manufacturing technically advanced and highly reliable drive units for the OEM market as well as retrofit drives for municipal and industrial end users. Nils has led the DBS team of engineers in the design and development of innovative new additions to the line of DBS products. Our retrofits page offers examples of customized solutions Nils and the team have developed for customers around the world. Nils served for six years as a member of the advisory board for the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.