Five branches. Five days. Seven hundred and fifty miles of Montana highway. One very long stretch of open road and a lot of people who showed up.

The 2026 Gendco Customer Appreciation Open House week ran July 13–17, and what started in Great Falls ended in Billings with something in between that's hard to put a number on, though we'll try, because the numbers are worth saying out loud.

800 burgers. 650 hotdogs. 120 pounds of pulled pork. 12 cases of water. 450 pounds of ice. 750 miles traveled by Glenn and Juliann Bliss, Eric Bliss, Sean Kelly, Evan Schlotfeldt, Jake Schrock, John Foster, and John Osswald, with Gendco’s own barbeque trailer in tow. They visited every branch on the schedule, and stayed until the last customer had eaten, seen the demos, and had a chance to talk.

That's what customer appreciation looks like when you mean it.

The Route 

Great Falls opened the week on July 13th at our home branch, the city where General Distributing has been headquartered since 1948. Helena followed on the 14th. Butte on the 15th. Bozeman on the 16th. Billings closed it out on the 17th, the largest city on the route and a fitting place to end a week that covered the width and depth of Montana's industrial corridor. 

Staff were on hand at every location to set-up and greet customers, and the grilling was done by Gendco's own leadership team. Glenn Bliss and crew didn't show up just to talk, they showed up to cook! 

Every stop had the same structure: a full BBQ spread, live vendor demos, giveaway prizes, shaking hands, talking shop, and doing exactly what a fourth-generation family business does when it wants to say thank you. 

The Vendors 

Eight industry partners joined us across the roadshow, each bringing live demos that put real equipment in front of real customers in ways that a product page or a sales call simply can't replicate.

Lincoln Electric and Miller Electric anchored the welding side of the floor, two of the strongest names in the industry, both represented in GD's product lineup and both putting their equipment through its paces in front of the customers who run it every day. What they showed our customers stopped people in their tracks! 

Rob Bennett, laser specialist from Miller, demonstrated the OptX 2kW Handheld Laser Welder. The OptX 2kW is a handheld laser welder that significantly reduces the learning curve. Novice welders can produce expert-level results with increased productivity, dramatically reduced pre and post-weld processing, near-zero distortion, and the ability to weld up to 5/16 inch thickness on sheet metal applications. David Duffin and Daniella Bernasconi were also on hand to answer questions about the entire Miller product lineup.

Blake Bishop from Lincoln Electric put the amazing Cooper Cobot through its paces. The Cooper Cobot is Lincoln Electric's collaborative robotic welding system: a robot arm that welds alongside your operator rather than replacing them. What makes the Cooper stand apart is how approachable it is. Programming is handled through the intuitive Cooper App, which guides operators through the process with pre-set weld parameters and simple on-screen steps, and uses auto recorded air movements. You don’t need a robotics background to get quality, consistent welds out of this machine. 

Hypertherm brought Scott Weaver who demoed the flush cut torch live at the branches. The flush cut torch is exactly what it sounds like: a plasma cutting torch engineered to cut flush to a surface, reaching tight spots and awkward angles that a standard torch can't get to. Watching it work on actual material in front of you is a different experience than reading the spec sheet.

Tanner Skalla fromFronius demonstrated the Ignis Battery 150, a battery powered stick and TIG welder with multiple welding functions. The portable Ignus Battery weighs only around 25 lbs. without the charger, and is built for demanding outdoor use. It has a straight from the battery mode as well as being able to charge and weld at the same time. For Montana customers working in the field, on job sites, and in settings where the power source isn't always stable and the conditions aren't always forgiving, the Ignis Battery 150 is a machine worth checking out in person. 

Walter Surface Technologies and Intermountain Marketing Group brought a wide array of abrasives, cut-off wheels and metalworking tools. Jaysen Mott put the Rail-Mate through its paces. The Rail-Mate is a variable-speed finishing tool designed to finish pipes, tubes, and railings — blending welds, removing stock, and polishing surfaces with a consistent linear scratch pattern around the circumference of the material. Variable speed control lets the operator move from 1,600 to 3,200 RPM, with Dynamax RPM monitoring maintaining consistent speed under load and Soft-Start technology preventing kickback on startup. Watching it work on pipe in real time makes the application immediately clear in a way that matters to fabricators and finishing operators who deal with exactly this problem every day. 

Mike Page from Flexovit was on the floor with numerous abrasive disks including the Alushark, specifically for aluminum, and the Flexovit E.T., a unique saucer shaped grinding wheel featuring a ‘built-in’ ergonomic grinding angle which allows the operator to keep their elbow lower, and their shoulder more relaxed. These abrasive products are built for the kind of work Montana shops actually do, and were demonstrated by someone who knows how they perform under real conditions. 

FEIN power tools rounded out the vendor floor with drills, grinders and vises. Adam Lester and Chad Fielding were on hand putting the FEIN VersaMAG L Magnetic Vise through its paces. The VersaMAG delivers up to 1,754 pounds of magnetic holding force and mounts instantly to any magnetic surface, no drilling, no setup, a tool that earns its place on any shop floor the moment you see what magnetic fixturing actually looks like when it's engineered correctly. 

Maker Highlight: Brenda Stredwick and Iron Maiden Welding 

Every stop had something worth talking about, Bozeman really had something to see. 

Brenda Stredwick of Iron Maiden Welding made a special appearance at the Bozeman Open House and brought a perspective on what a plasma cutter can do that most product demos never get close to. Brenda is a metal artist who upcycles salvaged steel, taking material that most people would walk past and turning it into one-of-a-kind art and functional pieces that give old steel a new life and a new story. 

Her tool of choice for the live demo was the Hypertherm Powermax 30 Air — a compact, lightweight plasma cutter that, in Brenda's hands, showed what that machine is capable of beyond the cutting table. Watching someone cut with intention, with artistry, with a clear vision of what the material is going to become — that's not a product demo. That's a demonstration of what the craft can be. 

Brenda's work is a reminder that the equipment GD supplies doesn't just build structures and fabricate parts. In the right hands, it makes things that matter beyond the functional. We were proud to have her in Bozeman. 

The Giveaways 

Customers across all five stops are winning. Grinders, welders, safety gear — prizes from every vendor on the floor, given away to the people who showed up and made the week worth doing. 

Winner announcements are rolling out weekly on GD's social media channels. If you were at any stop on the roadshow, stay tuned. And if you're not following GD on Facebook yet, now is the time — the announcements are happening there first. 

What the Week Was About 

Customer appreciation events are easy to do halfway. You rent a space, set up some tables, hand out branded merchandise, and call it community investment. 

That's not what this week was. 

Glenn Bliss and the GD executive team traveled 750 miles across Montana in five days because the customers at each of those branches deserve to be visited, not just supplied. Because the relationship between General Distributing and its customers isn't a transaction — it's a partnership that in some cases spans multiple decades and multiple generations of the same operation. Because a company that has been in business since 1948 in the same state, serving the same industries, understands that the people who keep coming back deserve to have leadership show up at their door, fire up the grill, and say thank you in person. 

The food was great. The demos were worth watching. The prizes are still coming. 

But the week was really about this: showing up for Montana the same way Montana has shown up for General Distributing for 78 years. 

We'll see you next time!

Keep an eye on our Facebook page for weekly giveaway winner announcements from the open house.