Cahoon, Francis C

Cahoon, Francis C, a sole-proprietor minority-owned and Native American-owned small disadvantaged business based in St. Ignatius, Montana and Redding, California, provides specialized wildland firefighting equipment, heavy machinery, and water handling services to the U.S. Forest Service and the National Interagency Fire Center as a prime contractor operating exclusively under total-small-business set-asides. The vendor competes entirely in the set-aside space — no full-and-open awards appear in the recent footprint — and holds no IDCs or BPAs at other federal agencies outside the Forest Service and fire-management ecosystem.

Cahoon's customer base is concentrated within the Department of Agriculture's wildland fire management structure. The Forest Service and the National Interagency Fire Center account for 100% of combined potential value across the recent award portfolio ($3.4 million total). Within that concentration, the National Interagency Fire Center anchors the dollars — $2.2 million across ten awards, primarily through indefinite-delivery contracts — while the Forest Service Region 1 (Northern Region) leads by volume with eighteen awards totaling $1.1 million combined potential value. Remaining exposure is split across Forest Service Regions 4 and 5. The vendor's capability footprint is narrow and specialized: 32 of 42 recent awards fall under NAICS 561730 (Support Activities for Forestry), concentrated on forest-range fire suppression and presuppression PSC codes. Concrete work includes delivery of water tenders, engines, dozers, and excavators; water handling personnel and equipment; and rapid mobilization of firefighting assets across state lines in support of wildland fire and all-hazard incident response.

Cahoon holds multiple indefinite-delivery contracts with the National Interagency Fire Center. Two of the highest-value vehicles are multiple-award IDCs awarded February 6, 2026: one for water handling across East Zone Regions 1, 2, 4, and 9 ($500,000 ceiling through May 30, 2030) and one for heavy equipment across the same zones ($500,000 ceiling through June 1, 2028), both set aside for total small business and structured for on-call mobilization through the Virtual Incident Procurement system. The vendor also holds older Forest Service water-handling IDCs with $250,000 ceilings, with the most recent awarded May 30, 2025 through May 30, 2030. Task orders against these vehicles include recent delivery orders of $68,944 (August 14, 2026, to Dalton Gardens, Idaho) and $35,070 (August 29, 2026, to Hamilton, Montana), both under total-small-business set-asides. Activity has been modest and episodic — four awards in 2026, but only one in 2025 and two in 2024 — with $771 thousand in combined dollars obligated against $3.4 million in combined potential value. Of the 42 awards in the source data spanning back to 2003, eleven awards face recompete or expiration within twenty-four months, representing significant pipeline renewal risk for a vendor whose recent velocity is low and whose customer base is a single federal mission area.