Big Skies, Big Impact:

Headquartered in Great Falls, MT, General Distributing Company is a fourth-generation, family-owned business distributing a diversified mix of gases for industrial, welding, beverages, manufacturing, oil and gas, medical, and agriculture, among other applications. For over 75 years, the company has focused on delivering customer-facing solutions through extensive employee training. That philosophy continues today and is evident in the company’s commitment to gas telemetry and the supervisory skill to best manage it.

We recently caught up with Adam Archuleta, who works as Operations Support for General Distributing. Adam embraces technology and has been instrumental in developing best practices for telemetry deployment and helping his team extract optimal value from the Pulsa platform and his company’s product and employee assets.

Thanks for joining us, Adam. How would you describe your role at General Distribution?

This industry is dynamic, and so my role has and will continue to change as we grow with the industry. I joined General Distributing about three years ago. I started off basically doing all the support roles for their medical business, overseeing contracts and making sure that all our customers were taken care of. Following a series of increasing needs, I took over the role of operations support about three months ago, which includes managerial responsibilities. Now I provide support for the entire organization.

How deeply was Pulsa integrated when you stepped into that role?

We initially were using telemetry primarily on our bulk tank assets. We slowly integrated more and more Pulsa telemetry into smaller beverage bulk CO2 systems. However, in our markets, we would only have telemetry on 10-20% of our bulk assets at most. Company management set out on an aggressive initiative in 2024 to improve overall operating efficiencies across the company. A significant part of this initiative was to get Pulsa installed in as many beverage CO2 accounts as possible. We decided to tackle the project market by market. As more and more units were installed, my role transitioned to take over the responsibility of managing the Pulsa technology. Our 2025 goal is to have Pulsa installed in 100% of our beverage tanks!

"Our 2025 goal is to have Pulsa installed in 100% of our beverage tanks!"

— Adam Archuleta

Operations Support

General Distributing Company

Do these customers have access to the same tank data?

We typically charge a nominal monthly rental fee for the technology and as part of that rental fee, customers absolutely have access to the data, and they love being able to monitor not only tank levels, but their usage as well so they can better identify any spikes or increased demand periods.

What’s an emergency situation for you in the Big Sky market?

Montana is a huge state, very sparsely populated, with many miles to cover. Additional challenges do occur during our winter months when we are often faced with difficult or severe driving conditions. Our delivery vehicles drive over 650,000 miles a year. Having technology to help make our routes as efficient as possible is critical to our operations. Pulsa has been vital in helping with this objective.

Do you let your customers set the alerts?

I set all the alerts at a default of 30% of tank capacity. I then work with local managers in deciding if specific customer tanks need to have alerts adjusted up or down. We want this to be very personalized to individual customers with the goal of filling them when they are at 25% or less of tank capacity without obviously letting them run out or even to get dangerously close.

How did the company decide to go all in on Pulsa?

Again, it was from a company management mandate to improve operating efficiencies and to figure out creative ideas to cut costs and waste. Since the pandemic, not only have inflationary pressures affected our business, but the labor market has been extremely difficult. Accelerating labor costs and a limited pool of qualified employees who share in our core values and our beliefs really forced us to look at unique ways to manage our business. Pulsa has been a great partner in this regard, and we have been very happy with the early results we are seeing.

How does Pulsa help maximize dispatch efficiency?

Pre-Pulsa CO2 beverage route drivers would pretty much stick to the same route every week. If they drove by a customer, they would stop and fill them regardless of whether they needed product or not because they were “in the area”. Our average fills occurred when the beverage tank was still 65-70% full. Our average stop is roughly $60, and when you are delivering 50-100# of CO2, the revenue tickets for those stops was often less than the cost of the stop. Now with Pulsa we are seeing significant improvements as we are not filling tanks until they are 30% or less full. The efficiency improvements have been terrific!

Should companies have a dedicated “telemetry guy?”

Not necessarily full-time, unless you’re dealing with a very large organization. When I walked into my current responsibilities with this system, there was no common denominator on how a sensor was named or how it was tagged. Up to this point, a big portion of our Pulsa initiative has been a lot more about cleanup than it has been about moving ideas forward. I cleaned it up, and while I was cleaning it up, I became proactive to keep it functioning efficiently.

What do you do with all that information?

Every day or couple of days, I sort the sensors and pull up the ones that were newly installed. I will go into each sensor, name it the way I want it named, and cross-reference the CO2 tank they have. Once I make sure it’s tagged appropriately, I will set the basic alerts, which are when the tank is at 30% remaining or the customer is using more than 5% per hour. I add the ID and the serial numbers from the gateways and the units and add them to a bill-out spreadsheet. My purchaser will do the tickets for those customers for rent going forward.

How is Pulsa helping General Distributing deliver better customer service?

It’s about being able to provide individualized customer service and support to each customer. Everybody's sense of an emergency is different. You have one customer that's in the red that might last three days, and another customer at that same level might last two weeks. That sense of an emergency for us is a lot different than it is for the customer, especially when we can tell them I'm looking at your tank right now. We can tell you, “You're going to last another week. We're going to come see you in x number of days. You are good to go.” Rather than we think you're going to be okay. With Pulsa, we can say it with certainty.

Don't stop reading. Learn how another gas distributor is lowering operating costs and adding to their bottom line with Pulsa.  Read the WestAir story.