Blacktail Fire Services, Inc.

Blacktail Fire Services, Inc., a for-profit Subchapter S corporation based in Dillon, Montana, provides wildland fire suppression equipment, personnel, and heavy equipment services to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service as a prime contractor under small business set-asides and full-and-open delivery orders. The company operates entirely as a prime (100% of recent awards) and competes across both set-aside and unrestricted vehicles, with the majority of recent work flowing through small-business-set-aside Indefinite Delivery Contracts and a single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement.

Customer concentration is extremely tight. The Department of Agriculture Forest Service Region 1 (Northern Region) accounts for 58 awards totaling $52.6 million in combined potential value—93% of the vendor's recent award footprint. The Department of Agriculture Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management National Interagency Fire Center holds 18 awards worth $3.4 million. This two-customer dependency (covering 100% of combined potential value) reflects Blacktail's specialization in a single mission and geographic region. Activity over the past five years has remained modest but steady—two awards in 2022 growing to thirteen in 2024 and declining to ten in 2025 and eleven through August 2026—suggesting seasonal and incident-driven ordering patterns rather than sustained growth.

Blacktail holds a $50 million single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement with USDA Forest Service Region 1 (Northern Rockies Stewardship BPA) running through October 2032, issued May 2023. The company also sits on five small-business-set-aside Indefinite Delivery Contracts through the Virtual Incident Procurement (VIPR) system, each valued at $250,000 to $500,000 with ultimate completion dates extending to 2030. The top IDCs by task-order volume are 1202SB23T7324 (14 task orders, $529 thousand combined potential), 1202SB22T7202 (12 task orders, $399 thousand), and 1202SB25T7906 (5 task orders, $175 thousand). These vehicles were awarded by the National Interagency Fire Center and Region 1 to procure water handling, miscellaneous heavy equipment (feller bunchers, mulchers, road graders, skidders), and fire suppression resources for East Zone Regions 1, 2, 4, 8, and 9.

Work is performed across western Forest Service regions with primary operations centered in Dillon, Montana and secondary sites in Helena, Montana and New Mexico. Recent delivery orders span August 2026 back to 2022, with individual order values ranging from $7,170 to $121,504 on the prime-contract side. Representative recent work includes a $121,504 delivery order (August 28, 2026) for wildland fire services and heavy equipment support under a total small business set-aside, a $50 million BPA spanning Regions 1, 2, 4, 8, and 9 for water tenders, dozers, excavators, and trained personnel, and multiple $250,000 small-business IDCs for water handling and heavy equipment across East Zone regions. The company has held contracting relationships with the Forest Service since at least 2003 and maintains active SAM.gov registration.

Blacktail's capability portfolio centers narrowly on specialized wildland fire equipment rental and operator services—water tenders, dozers, excavators, feller bunchers, mulchers, road graders, and skidders—plus trained fire suppression and prevention personnel for emergency response and prescribed project work on federal lands. The category concentration in the source reflects this focus: 81 of 83 awards sit under NAICS 561730 (Support Activities for Forestry), and 82 of 83 orders fall under PSC ZZ37 (Natural Resources/Conservation—Forest-Range Fire Suppression/Presuppression). Delivery orders are consistently firm fixed-price with performance periods of 3 to 30 days, matching the compressed timeline of peak fire season contracting.

The vendor carries no subcontract work and no current grant or sub-award involvement. Combined potential value across all 83 awards is $56 million, but only $2.1 million (4% of potential) has been obligated, indicating these are ceiling values on standing indefinite-delivery vehicles and blanket-purchase agreements rather than fully funded commitments. This posture—small business set-asides on fire-focused IDCs and a single large BPA—positions Blacktail as an incumbent specialist in USDA Forest Service wildland response procurement but leaves the vendor exposed to contract recompetes, weather-dependent incident volume, and customer concentration risk in a single federal bureau.