Tri State Excavating LLC

Tri State Excavating LLC, a small-business limited liability company based in West Yellowstone and Bozeman, Montana, operates as a 100% prime contractor delivering road maintenance, road and bridge construction, and heavy equipment rental services to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and related federal land management agencies, competing exclusively under total small business set-asides and full-and-open procurements with consistent set-aside designations across the prime footprint.

Tri State Excavating's capability portfolio centers on road grading, maintenance, and light construction; drainage installation and vegetation removal; bridge construction and repair; and heavy equipment rental (dozers, excavators, feller bunchers, mulcher/masticators, road graders, and skidders) supporting wildland fire suppression operations. Representative work includes a $4.2 million definitive contract awarded in April 2022 by Forest Service Region 1 to convert 8.75 miles of abandoned railroad grade into the Yellowstone Shortline Trail #611 rail-to-trail facility near West Yellowstone, Montana, involving subgrade reconstruction, three steel truss bridges, one timber bridge, paved trail installation, and access road reconditioning through October 2023; a $379,065 Blanket Purchase Agreement call issued in September 2024 for pre-road maintenance and construction on the Custer Gallatin National Forest, including culvert pipe installation; and a $271,982 delivery order awarded in June 2023 for road maintenance and light construction (road surfacing, drainage, vegetation removal, grading, aggregate placement, and bridge repair) on the Custer Gallatin National Forest under an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract.

Customer concentration is severe and regional. The Department of Agriculture Forest Service Region 1 (Northern Region) anchors 98% of recent awards by count and 83% by potential value, with 42 awards totaling $108.4 million in combined potential value. The Department of Agriculture Forest Service Region 2 (Rocky Mountain Region) accounts for five awards worth $20.6 million combined; the National Interagency Fire Center seven awards worth $2 million; and the Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management Idaho Region one award. The vendor sits on five parent vehicles: a $50 million Indefinite Delivery Contract (MATOC) for Region 1 Road and Bridge Construction Services awarded December 2024 (no task orders yet ordered from this source's snapshot date); a $50 million Blanket Purchase Agreement for Region 1–Region 4 Forest Engineering and Road Maintenance (FERM) awarded October 2023 and running through August 2033; a $20 million single-award IDIQ for Region 2 road maintenance services awarded September 2025; two multiple-award IDICs awarded in February and April 2025 to the National Interagency Fire Center for heavy equipment rental, each valued at $250,000 to $500,000 and running through April or May 2030; and a $250,000 VIPR I-BPA for heavy equipment awarded in May 2025. The Custer Gallatin National Forest Road Maintenance and Light Construction IDIQ (parent contract 12034320D0024, established prior to the source's earliest snapshot) has generated ten task orders totaling $994 thousand across the visible award range.

Activity has remained flat and modest by dollar volume. The vendor received four to six awards per year over the past five years (2022–2026), with combined potential value across all 56 awards standing at $131 million but only $7.3 million (6%) obligated. Only two awards face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, combining $188 thousand in potential value, presenting minimal recompete exposure. Tri State Excavating operates exclusively as a prime contractor with no subcontract footprint in the source data, building its own delivery teams rather than leaning on subcontractors.

Service Contract Inventory reporting shows limited invoiced activity: $3.5 million in FY2023 across 4.1 FTEs on a prime contract recorded in SCI, with no SCI-reportable invoicing in FY2022 or FY2024. Government-paid hourly rates on SCI-reportable prime contracts ran uniformly at $412/hour across the 10th percentile, median, and 90th percentile, indicating fixed-rate or flat-labor-cost invoicing rather than tiered labor categories. The vendor did not engage subcontractors on SCI-reportable prime contracts (0% sub-hours share). SCI is a partial view: it covers federal service contracts above $150,000 and excludes the vendor's construction goods and equipment-rental work, which comprises the bulk of its recent awards; the $3.5 million SCI figure is not the vendor's total federal revenue or enterprise revenue.