When a family is in the scale industry for four generations, relationships carry weight.

In 1979, after many years of working with his dad, Meghan Will’s father moved his family from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Bismarck, North Dakota, where he purchased Capital Scale Company. One of their first relationships was with Capital Electric Cooperative, a Basin Electric Class C member. The family went on to build a thriving business that Meghan and her husband, Travis, began operating in 2012 and purchased in 2018. The company sells, services, and certifies scales, like the scale in the ring at Kist Livestock in Mandan, North Dakota (shown here). “From the food you eat to the roads you drive on, the fertilizer you put on your crops and the truck that transports the fertilizer, all those things get weighed by scales,” Meghan says. “We can start our day testing the scale at the local butcher shop, go to the clinic to test medical scales, and finish on a truck scale at the weigh station ensuring trucks on the road are not over capacity.”

When the area began growing quickly due to an oil boom in the Bakken shale formation of western North Dakota and eastern Montana, oil companies were courting Capital Scale Company with offers to pay four times what their current customers were paying. “The boom made the service side of our business a lot busier, but we have prided ourselves on customer service and taking care of the customers who have been with us for 25 years,” Meghan says. “We appreciate the customers who have kept us in business year after year. The oil boom has been a great asset, but agriculture is still a bigger industry for us.”

The Wills say the reliable electricity and small business feel they receive from Capital Electric mean a lot. “If our power wasn’t reliable, we may as well not come to work. I couldn’t imagine trying to operate without reliable electricity,” Meghan says. “I love the fact we are a member of a cooperative that gives a percentage back to the loyal customers they have.”