BILLINGS— The U.S. Small Business Administration met with more than a dozen Billings business owners Wednesday morning to discuss challenges they are facing, such as high costs of transportation and supplies.
“There was a lot of commonality here and I saw a lot of people talking that have similar transportation issues, for example,” SBA Regional Administrator Justin Everett said at the Big Sky Economic Development office in downtown Billings.
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Everett hopes the SBA can help connect businesses with onshore resource suppliers through its onshoring portal.
“We've had north of a hundred thousand businesses sign up to where you can connect with someone,” he said.
The co-owners of Ranch House Meat Co., Tanya Flowers and Shane Flowers, said they would like to see shipping costs go down.
“We lost a multimillion-dollar account, to be honest with you, because of shipping prices in and out of Montana,” Shane Flowers said.

For them, it was a comfort to see other business owners at the meeting enduring the same struggles.
“It's good to hear that there's others that are looking for ways to better it too, that they'll be able to help us out or we'll be able to help them out, hopefully to get larger loads out of here or maybe even figure out different ways to get loads out of here or into here. Because we struggle with that quite a bit,” Tanya Flowers said.
The owners are skeptical about recent tariffs but hope Montana businesses will see improvements in the future.
“Luckily in our industry, we don't have that as much, you know what I mean? We're able to source more regionally and whatnot. But for those folks, I get it. I feel for them,” Shane Flowers said.
Amid the concerns, Everett still believes recent tariffs and usage of domestic resources from the U.S. will benefit businesses.
“I think the capacity is there. I think the capacity is going to get better,” Everett said.