Gist Enterprises LLC

Gist Enterprises LLC, a woman-owned small business based in Whitefish, Montana, provides firefighting vehicles, water handling equipment, and emergency response logistical support to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service as a prime contractor, operating exclusively under small-business set-asides and competing at 100% prime (zero subcontract revenue).

Gist's customer base is heavily concentrated within the Forest Service. The top two funding entities account for 77% of recent awards by count: the National Interagency Fire Center (19 awards, $1.5 million combined potential value) and Forest Service Region 1 Northern Region (21 awards, $1.2 million), with Regions 4, 6, and 5 representing the remainder of material activity. The potential-value ranking tracks award count closely, with the National Interagency Fire Center and Region 1 anchoring $2.7 million of the combined $3.6 million portfolio. Across 73 prime awards, Gist has obligated $2.3 million (64% of potential value).

Gist holds three active Indefinite Delivery Contracts with the Forest Service. The largest, a $500,000 multiple-award water-handling IDC awarded February 6, 2026, covers East Zone Regions 1, 2, 4, and 9 with completion through May 30, 2030 under total-small-business set-aside. A second $250,000 small-business IDC awarded May 30, 2025 also serves Regions 1, 2, 4, and 9 and runs through May 2025. A third $250,000 small-business IDC awarded May 31, 2022 covers Regions 1, 2, 4, 8, and 9 with completion through May 2025. Both legacy IDCs are set-aside vehicles operating under the Virtual Incident Procurement (VIPR) system, which enables rapid five- to eighteen-day task-order deployment across regions. The largest vehicle by task-order volume, IDC 12034319T7064, has generated 22 delivery orders totaling $541 thousand; IDC 1202SB22T7279 produced 15 orders for $778 thousand combined.

Representative recent work includes a $44,829 small-business-set-aside delivery order awarded August 12, 2026, for wildland fire suppression and emergency response support in Dillon, Montana (Region 1), a $35,931 delivery order issued July 19, 2026, for fire suppression equipment and support in Duluth, Minnesota (Region 9), and a $78,212 delivery order awarded October 9, 2024, for fire suppression and emergency response operations. All awards are firm fixed-price delivery orders with performance periods typically ranging from five to ninety days.

Activity has been uneven. Gist placed four awards in 2022, dropped to three in 2023, rebounded to nine in 2024, moderated to four in 2025, and returned to six in 2026 year to date. The vendor's portfolio is entirely concentrated in NAICS 541512 (Support Activities for Forestry) and PSC Natural Resources/Conservation—Forest-Range Fire Suppression/Presuppression, with negligible diversification. No recompete cliff is evident in the source material; the legacy IDC vehicles complete through May 2025, but the newly awarded $500,000 February 2026 IDC provides runway through 2030.