Reducing Turnover by 70% in One Year w/ Glenn Baranko – DT 346

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dirt Talk by BuildWitt
Episode: Reducing Turnover by 70% in One Year w/ Glenn Baranko – DT 346
Release Date: June 12, 2025

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Introduction

In episode DT 346 of Dirt Talk by BuildWitt, host Aaron engages in a compelling discussion with Glenn Baranko and Joe, focusing on the remarkable achievement of reducing employee turnover by 70% within a single year. The conversation delves into the challenges faced by construction companies amidst rapid growth, particularly during the oil boom in North Dakota’s Bakken region. Glenn shares insights into the culture shifts, hiring practices, and community engagement strategies that have transformed his company into a more stable and cohesive workforce.

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Growth and Challenges in the Oil Boom

Aaron opens the discussion by highlighting the sudden surge in demand due to the Bakken oil boom, leading to rapid business expansion and inherent chaos:

"[00:00] Aaron: I mean, you're one of the local companies, local contractors. You're just doing your thing, building stuff, but at a steady clip. And then the Bakken comes online, and now everybody needs everything almost overnight."

Glenn acknowledges the financial pressures that accompany such rapid growth:

"[00:39] Glenn: You needed to make a lot of money because of all the slippage, all the, you know… Money covers up a lot of sins."

He emphasizes how the influx of funds can sometimes mask underlying operational issues, setting the stage for the subsequent discussion on employee turnover.

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Culture Transformation and Reducing Turnover

A pivotal moment in Glenn’s company came when he and Joe recognized the deteriorating morale amidst unprecedented growth:

"[05:06] Glenn: That's a very fair assessment, yeah."

Glenn recounts how they, along with long-standing employee Joe, initiated a culture overhaul:

"[08:22] Glenn: You know, and it's a top down thing. And we've gotten great buy in because back to a few years ago, some of these superintendents we were exhausted and they've seen the benefits of the core values making their jobs easier."

The introduction of core values, developed with the help of a Vistage chair, played a crucial role in aligning the team’s objectives and fostering a positive work environment. This strategic shift led to a dramatic reduction in employee turnover:

"[08:29] Aaron: It was that. But I mean, that's a pretty big shift."

Glenn elaborates on the specific changes, such as selective hiring and open communication, which contributed to the enhanced workplace culture:

"[11:17] Glenn: And so it took some time. This isn't like we just googled something and threw it up on the wall. We met with her probably like once a month for probably six months to. To develop. So it was about a year long process by the time we were done."

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Mental Health Initiatives

The conversation shifts to the importance of addressing mental health within the construction industry, a topic often overlooked. Glenn discusses proactive measures his company has taken:

"[15:20] Glenn: And we have a monthly safety meeting, and we try to bring in different people to talk about different things instead of us standing up there as slips, trips, and faults, you know?"

He recounts impactful sessions with mental health speakers, highlighting personal stories that resonate deeply with employees:

"[16:18] Glenn: …Eric Johnson. Meineke Johnson. They're out of Fargo. So he's a contractor. He's just like us, and he talked about his, you know, experiences with struggling…"

Aaron applauds Glenn's approach to mental health, emphasizing the authenticity and relatability of their initiatives:

"[14:52] Joe: Yep.
[14:52] Glenn: It's about lead by example."

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Strategic Hiring Practices

Glenn attributes the reduction in turnover to more disciplined and culturally aligned hiring practices:

"[26:06] Glenn: Hire slow, fire fast, you know, making sure that they're a good culture fit."

By leveraging referrals and thorough onboarding processes, the company ensures new hires align with their core values and long-term vision:

"[26:36] Glenn: We bring them in on Mondays and go through our core values, go through company history. We take them out for lunch, and I make sure that I'm in the office on Mondays, so I go for lunch with them and get to interact with these guys."

Aaron underscores the effectiveness of these strategies in fostering a committed and loyal workforce:

"[26:50] Aaron: Sure. Okay."

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Embracing Technology

The discussion moves to the integration and optimization of GPS technology within the company’s operations. Glenn explains the initial investment and continuous training that ensure technology is effectively utilized:

"[06:19] Glenn: And we bring RDO in. Matter of fact, they were just in here a few weeks ago training on our guys and going over stuff."

Aaron points out the often underutilized potential of such technologies, highlighting the importance of ongoing training and deliberate implementation:

"[07:31] Aaron: …have you really implemented it? Do you have ongoing training?"

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Community Engagement and Recognition

A standout element of Glenn’s strategy is the use of a company food truck as a tool for community engagement and employee recognition. Glenn describes various initiatives that strengthen community ties and boost employee morale:

"[76:37] Glenn: Yeah. There's some pretty good pictures of it on there. And we drag it around. Then we do other community events…"

Notable events include feeding thousands of hot dogs at career fairs, community gatherings, and special occasions like Trick or Treat:

"[77:00] Glenn: …we do a thousand hot dogs, and we did 900 hot dogs."

These activities not only foster goodwill within the community but also enhance the company’s brand recognition:

"[84:03] Aaron: …you have the same people saying we need less fossil fuels, but we need more data centers…
[84:26] Aaron: …but that's like a missing piece."

Aaron and Glenn discuss the broader implications of their community initiatives, emphasizing the reciprocal benefits of employee and community engagement.

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Training and Education Initiatives

Glenn highlights the company's commitment to cultivating the next generation of workers through partnerships with local educational institutions. Their involvement with the Career and Technical Education (CTE) program demonstrates a dedication to providing practical training and fostering long-term employment relationships:

"[84:53] Glenn: …the sandbox was there yet… it's kind of in the middle.
[85:46] Aaron: …When I was out there last time, you took me around that whole program…
[85:49] Glenn: …it's accredited. So it's, you know, part of their ok…"

Additionally, the company offers tuition reimbursement programs to support employees’ educational pursuits, further strengthening employee loyalty:

"[89:00] Glenn: So with us, we do $20,000 of tuition with a four year commitment.
[89:07] Aaron: Interesting."

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Sustainable Growth and Future Plans

As the company continues to grow, Glenn discusses the importance of maintaining their cultural ethos while expanding their operational capacity. Emphasis is placed on continuous improvement, community presence, and leveraging technology to stay ahead in a competitive market:

"[73:38] Glenn: Well, it's things like I said, you know, recognizing people…"
"[74:25] Glenn: …continue building on what we already have."

Looking ahead, Glenn expresses optimism about the company’s trajectory, emphasizing the ongoing efforts to nurture a supportive and efficient work environment:

"[93:01] Glenn: And this is the kind of stuff… You know, the foreman and the superintendents telling the guys the why. Sure goes a long ways."

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Conclusions

In conclusion, Glenn Baranko’s leadership exemplifies how intentional cultural transformation, strategic hiring, embracing technology, and active community engagement can significantly reduce employee turnover and foster a thriving workplace. The episode not only highlights successful strategies but also serves as an inspiration for other construction leaders aiming to create a positive and sustainable work environment.

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Notable Quotes

• Aaron on the Impact of the Bakken Boom:
  "[00:00] …now everybody needs everything almost overnight."

• Glenn on Financial Pressures:
  "[00:39] …Money covers up a lot of sins."

• Glenn on Culture Change:
  "[11:17] …it was about a year long process by the time we were done."

• Glenn on Mental Health Initiatives:
  "[15:20] …we try to bring in different people to talk about different things…"

• Glenn on Hiring Practices:
  "[26:06] Hire slow, fire fast, you know, making sure that they're a good culture fit."

• Aaron on Technology Utilization:
  "[07:31] …have you really implemented it? Do you have ongoing training?"

• Glenn on Community Engagement:
  "[76:37] …we do other community events… we did 900 hot dogs."

• Glenn on Education Initiatives:
  "[89:00] So with us, we do $20,000 of tuition with a four year commitment."

• Glenn on Sustaining Growth:
  "[93:01] …the foreman and the superintendents telling the guys the why."

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This episode of Dirt Talk showcases the profound impact of leadership and thoughtful company practices in shaping a resilient and loyal workforce, offering valuable lessons for industry professionals seeking to navigate the complexities of rapid growth and operational excellence.

Transcript

[Aaron]

I mean, you're one of the local companies, local contractors. You're just doing your thing, building stuff, but at a. At a steady clip. And then the Bakken comes online, and now everybody needs everything almost overnight.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

And now you're. You're probably being called everywhere to do everything, and you're growing like crazy. But then that creates a big degree of chaos that I don't think people, like, people that have not been in a growing business can't totally appreciate and understand because everybody's like, well, you know, business is up, you're making more money. It's like, well, yeah, but at what cost? There's.

[Glenn]

You needed to make a lot of money because of all the slippage, all the, you know.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Money covers up a lot of sins.

[Aaron]

Yeah. I've seen in Australia, I just tell everybody about this because I just dream of. They don't really have typical pickup trucks. Like, they, they have. They have the pickup truck, but then the bed comes off. You don't, you don't want the bed because you basically build out the back of your truck however you want it. So there's all these aftermarket beds and, and you can, I mean, you can put whatever you want on the back of your truck. And I know we kind of have that here, but not really. Like, the, the customization there is incredible. And they have these beds with, like, these really streamlined fuel tanks built into them as well, and all kinds of fun stuff. So you can get additional capacity or you can get a water tank, you know, for washing your hands and all kinds of, all kinds of things built into this modified bed that you then put on the back of your truck.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

And I've seen those in your videos, and they're littler pickups. Like, I don't know what they are, Nissans or Toyotas or something. You don't see the big pickups. Like, we have.

[Aaron]

You. You don't. If you, if you do, someone spent some money, like, I mean, it's like a quarter million bucks.

[Glenn]

Oh, boy.

[Aaron]

For a F250, they're way more expensive because you have to get them converted to right hand drive. So they come in, then they have to convert them, which makes them a lot more, because they don't. It's all these, like, random aftermarket vendors that do it. It's not Ford that does it, which is interesting. But you'll see, you'll see rams, you'll see GMCs, you'll see Fords. But, you know, somebody spent some money on that. Like their contractors doing really well, well.

[Glenn]

And then you see, like the cat dealers, they got their service trucks, you know, so here we're used to seeing, you know, 550s big trucks, you know.

[Aaron]

550S on the smaller side too, compared to some of them.

[Glenn]

Yeah. And then they got these little pickups.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Running around.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it was the funniest. I remember we were on a coal mine in New South Wales and It's a Liebherr 9800 they're servicing. So it's an 800 ton excavator, a big excavator. And the guy pulls up in a Hilux and it has like two toolboxes on the back. And he opens up the drawer and he grabs like a few tools and he climbs up the 9800 ladder and starts to do a little servicing on it. It's like, what in the United States this would be four big service trucks, a crane. And he wasn't doing this big PM on it. He was doing some. Some little stuff. But it's just like this is a way different. Way different way to do it.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And the American mind, like, they're just like, where's the crane? Like, you can't do anything without a crane. Yeah, they're like, no, you can do a lot without a crane. We do it all the time. And then in Europe they use vans, which is, I think, even sillier.

[Glenn]

Yeah, yeah, that one. I'd have a hard time.

[Aaron]

Yeah, they're all. They're all sprinter vans. Well, the big ones are sprinter vans, but then they have the small, like Volkswagen bus vans as well. But the big sprinter vans will have like a workbench in them. They'll have like a little workshop built into them, which I actually think is quite slick.

[Glenn]

Well, and you just had the post or video where they have the Conexes that they drag around and make workshops.

[Aaron]

Yeah, the demolition companies, especially, like the big machines. Every big machine has its own Conex with just whatever that machine needs. And it goes wherever that machine goes. And it has like, whatever machine, you know, number on the Connex and it has a little workshop. It has your stuff for. For, you know, grease, fluids, whatever. It has whatever spare parts might be needed for the machine. It's amazing. It has the manuals, you know, every. Everything that machine needs is in that Conex. Cables, straps, anything for lifting. Whatever. Whatever you need. It's super impressive. Yeah, super impressive. They're buttoned up. I'm ex. I'm. I'm like, what you're saying a little Bit ago, though. I'm really, really. The more I see you guys, the more I'm impressed because, like, even just a few years ago, I think you might say, like, you were a more old school North Dakota contractor. Is that a fair assessment?

[Glenn]

That's a very fair assessment, yeah.

[Aaron]

And now you're doing all kinds of stuff. Like you're having employee meetings with speakers, you're having. You're doing social media. Hire somebody full time for marketing. You just said you're getting a tilt rotator. Like, it's, it's, it's everywhere now.

[Glenn]

Well, it's been a big part because exposure and seeing what you've put out there and seeing other things, you know, we get in that where you get blinders, you know, put on and you kind of do what you did yesterday, today and tomorrow. Yeah, and that's really not our M.O. and it wasn't even my dad's M.O. you know, my dad was very, you know, progressive.

[Aaron]

So that's. And I think like the construction industry, I feel like, has always been progressive. It's just been progressive in different ways. Like, it's now just. I feel like companies have to be progressive in a different way now. And it's mostly instead of like, how we're building jobs, because we kind of have that figured out at this point. I feel like there's not as much innovation how we're building things or even equipment. Like the machines are kind of the machines nowadays. I feel like it's in technology and people.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Definitely is really where it's taking place right now.

[Glenn]

And we've embraced technology. I believe it was 2014, we had a project that required GPS. So, like, we went from nothing to like, I don't remember how many hundreds of thousands of dollars we spent on gps. And gps up a ton of equipment.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, and today you can't not have it.

[Aaron]

Sure. It's just standard now. Yeah, yeah. I still feel like it's way underutilized because I don't feel like a lot of companies, they have it, so they go out and buy it and they're like, we have gps. It's like, well, yeah, you have it, but have you trained on it? Do your people know how to use it? Have you, like, really implemented it? Do you have ongoing training? Because the software is changing constantly. Like it's, it's. Sure it's a hardware product, but it's a software product as well. Like, are you working it into your business in a deliberate way or have you just spent a bunch of money at the local Trimble dealer. They've put it on machines. You're like, we're good to go. And I feel like there's contractors that are deliberately training and implementing their GPS to this day that are getting so much more out of it than the contractors that have just bought it for good. For good measure, because everybody else has.

[Glenn]

It and we bring RDO in. Matter of fact, they were just in here a few weeks ago training on our guys and going over stuff. And then when we buy a new piece of equipment, we get the manufacturer to come in and do a walk around with us. Because it isn't like years ago where you buy a 140 motor grader and a 140 motor grader is a 140 motor grader. But, you know, every year they. They change and improve. So then we actually split it up where we have the. The mechanics spend some time with the manufacturer, and then also the operators spend time with the manufacturer. So everybody's up to speed on it.

[Aaron]

Okay, that's. That's good. The mechanics too. I feel like the operator training I've seen, but I haven't seen as much with the mechanics. But that's. That's quite good. So they know how to wrench on it.

[Glenn]

Yeah, yeah. It means stuff just changes.

[Aaron]

It does.

[Glenn]

You know.

[Aaron]

Yeah. The engineers don't always tell the mechanics that they're changing some things.

[Glenn]

Yep.

[Aaron]

No, it's interesting too, because you've. I don't know when I was talking to you, but you were saying with turnover, you guys have been a lot better.

[Glenn]

Yeah, we dropped our turnover 70% last year.

[Aaron]

That's insane.

[Glenn]

It's absolutely crazy. But it was a culture change, being more selective when we're hiring, you know, make sure we're getting the right people in the right fit and back to it. It's a lot of credit from stuff that we've learned from you and following you. And if you go back prior to, say, 2006, 7, when the Bakken really started taking off, we had a great culture, but there was only peak season, maybe 50 employees. And then things just exploded. And you're hiring people like crazy. And you're hiring people that can pass a drug test. That's about the only requirement. Get a lot of baggage. And our culture just started to slip. And we realized that a few years ago and we sat down, realized, you know what? We got to do something. It might be kind of painful for a little bit, but in the long run it's gonna going to really benefit us.

[Aaron]

But how'd you realize that.

[Glenn]

Morale. Morale was in the toilet. You know, could just see it on the guys. Like they were the foreman and the supervisors.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

You know, they were exhausted.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And sat down and told the guys, you know, I would just as soon see a scraper parked than have the wrong guy in the seat.

[Aaron]

It was that. But I mean, that's a pretty big shift.

[Glenn]

Mm.

[Aaron]

Because like before, it's like, just get anybody in the seat. We need the scraper moving.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Like the scraper settings. The last thing you want.

[Glenn]

Exactly.

[Aaron]

But how, like, how do you, how do you get to that mindset shift though? Like, that's top down. Yeah.

[Glenn]

I mean, Joe and I. And Joe's been with me for, boy, 35 years.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

You know, he's been there forever and he's a general manager of construction. He started out work for my dad as a laborer. Pipe crew.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And so he's gone through all that. He's seen the growth in it. And him and I were just talking one day and he's like, man, it's not good. You know, we need to, we need to change things. It's just not sustainable to keep going like this here. So we sat down with a handful of us. I picked guys. There was about six, eight of us that have been there for a long time and developed our core values. Why are you guys here and what has kept you guys here this long? We brought in a friend. Are you familiar Vistage? Yeah. Okay. Our Vistage chair. She came in and worked with us to develop our core values and dig down to what makes us us.

[Aaron]

Okay, so you brought somebody else in to help you.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Talk through it.

[Glenn]

And so it took some time. This isn't like we just googled something and threw it up on the wall. We met with her probably like once a month for probably six months to. To develop. So it was about a year long process by the time we were done. And you know, we don't have like a three strikes and you're out kind of a deal. It's case by case. But you know, we had a deal last year where we had a guy that was drinking pretty heavy.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Brought him in, sat him down, had the critical conversation with him. You know, we're in the past. You know, you're going to fire the guy.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

But get down to what's going on, you know. Can we help you? Ended up unfortunately after a couple times we had to let him go. But just doing things like that, not hollering at somebody, sitting down and having a polite Conversation. You know, there was some of that old school construction. You know, hard, driven, don't tell people the. Why yell at them.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, and that's gone.

[Aaron]

But that. But. But what I think is impressive is, is you came up that way. Like, that's the world you came up in. Yeah. And you're not. It's not like you took over for your dad last year.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

You know, like, it's not the next generations coming in like, oh, we need to do things differently. Like, you've run every. That's how you came up. You've run everything for a long time. And you still got to a point where it's like, listen, we need to change. But like you said, starts at the top down. And I think it reflects very positively upon you because it requires a lot of. It requires you to change a lot. And I feel like there's a lot of guys within this world, they want the company to change, but they don't really want to change. And they're the blocker in the whole thing. Like, it starts. It's. I've been thinking about this a lot, even with mental health. So everybody's talking about mental health right now in construction. And you see a lot of executives, leaders. I've seen all these kinds of videos where it's not people really in civil construction. It's kind of like other. Other worlds. But it'll be the executive talking. It's like a scripted video talking about how important it is to talk about mental health. And it's like, that's great. I. I'm all for talking about it, but it's like, it's gonna go furthest if you do the work you need to do from a mental health standpoint and then talk about that and model how we should be talking about it with yourself first and foremost. Like that, I think, is really what would speak the most volume. Like, that's what would really change an organization. If the person, guy, woman, whatever, says, hey, I'm just as screwed up as you. I've had my problems. Yeah. At one point, like, say, I've struggled with alcohol, alcoholism. But. But here's how I. How I overcame that. I'm grateful I did, and here's why my life's better. So on and so forth. Like a story like that. Now I'm. Especially as a young person within that company. I'm listening. Oh, wow. This is. This is huge. But it starts, like, I feel like it starts with that. I don't. I just don't think you can. Whoever's Leading the charge. You can't. If they're. If they're running, the organization's gonna run. But if they're. If they're not, in whatever way, they're gonna block everybody else, whether they like it or not. Does that make sense?

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

It's about lead by example.

[Aaron]

Yeah, it's. Yeah. Which was a very long winded way of saying lead by example, but everybody says that it just doesn't happen as often.

[Glenn]

Well, mental health is taboo, you know.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And people don't want to, you know, talk about it. So it's. It's tough. It's a struggle. It's tough, you know, And I haven't, you know, myself, like, what you just talked about, gone and talked about it, but we've had some really good people come in and talk to our guys. Sure. And so we have a monthly safety meeting, and we try to bring in different people to talk about different things instead of us standing up there as slips, trips, and faults, you know?

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Glenn]

And I seen a great guy speak at the AGC convention a few years ago, and it was just before Christmas, and I thought, you know what? We need to have somebody come in and talk to our guys about mental health before Christmas, because Christmas isn't a great place for everybody. Great time for everybody.

[Aaron]

It's a terrible time for a lot of people. Yeah.

[Glenn]

And so change directions. Like, safety meeting was like, in three, four days. I'm like, all right, scrap your old plans are going a whole another direction. Brought this guy in and talked to our guys. I had somebody come into my office and close the door, and they're like, did you see something? Did you do that because of me? And I go, no. And he goes, I went and talked to somebody like, good for you. Thanks for sharing that.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Glenn]

Found out afterwards a handful of people had went out and talked to somebody after that. The guy that I saw at the agency came and talked to us this year over our safety days when we had everybody in and Ken Rusk was our keynote.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And we also had this guy come in and talk about mental health. The guys were as impressed with the mental health guy as they were with.

[Aaron]

Ken Rusk, who is a mental health guy.

[Glenn]

Eric Johnson. Meineke Johnson. They're out of Fargo. So he's a contractor. He's just like us. And he talked about his, you know, experiences with struggling.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And he was no different than the rest of us. He's a contractor. He's not a counselor. And talked about, you know, divorce and, you know, suicidal thoughts. And all this here and where he was at as a teen to where he is at today.

[Aaron]

That's huge.

[Glenn]

It was impactful. I mean, he was good.

[Aaron]

Well, and this is. And so you have that at your meeting, and then you had Ken Rusk.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Which is all about a lot of its personal finance, which is, I would say, tied to mental health in a lot of ways. And people don't always acknowledge that, but that's. That's a huge stressor and a skill set that a lot of people don't have, especially young people, even when they're making good money. Especially in the oil patch.

[Glenn]

Yes.

[Aaron]

Which I thought was pretty cool, too, to bring in somebody like Ken Rusk. I've had him on the podcast.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Yeah, he was on the other. On your Thursday show here recently.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah, we've. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, we've done. We've done a little bit with him. Yeah.

[Glenn]

But so that's how I first got to learn about him was from your podcast.

[Aaron]

Okay.

[Glenn]

So after that, I went read his book and read it a second time and actually read it a third time before he came and spoke to us.

[Aaron]

Wow. But that, but that, that's. That's what I'm trying to illustrate. Like, I think you're a good example of. You read the book three times yourself before you have him come in and speak to your company. Like, that's, that's. I just, I'm calling it out because I don't see it all that much where it's like, again, you have. You could very easily say, listen, we're just gonna keep doing business as usual because you're. You're at that point in your career where it's like, you've just been doing it a certain way for a very long time. Like, let's just keep doing it that way. We're making good enough money. Like, why don't. Why don't we just keep down this path, which is where a lot of people are. And I would be there, too, if I were them, if I had been doing something same way for 30 years. I'm just going to keep going down that direction. But I like how you have this curiosity, starting with you, about, like, maybe there's a better way we could teach our people about personal finance, for example. And then you go read the book three times and then pay Ken to come in and speak with your group and. And pay to have everybody at your company into this meeting in the first place and then make the meeting not just. Well, we have A meeting, because we need a meeting. But let's make the meeting, let's make it valuable. Let's not just talk about subscriptions falls. Let's bring in somebody who I've seen, who I know is good talking about mental health. Let's bring in Ken who can talk about like let's, let's give everybody here value, value beyond. Here's where we are as a company. Like that's valuable too. But let's, let's leverage this opportunity because I see a lot of companies, they'll, they spend all the money to bring their people together and then it's like, it's almost a missed opportunity because it's like, well, you have all your people together. Bring somebody in that, that they're not really expecting. Like, like they're not, they're not expecting a message like this when they come in. But then they get it. It's like. And because they weren't expecting it, it's, it's almost even more valuable.

[Glenn]

Yep. Yeah. And you know, of course you came and spoke last year and that was the first time that we had a.

[Aaron]

Summit that was a mess.

[Glenn]

But, and you know, we were like, hey, we need to make this an annual thing. So now this year we actually took it to another level because we got guys from all over the country that work for us and they get laid off in the winter. We live streamed it and so then everybody that's there, you know, we cater in lunch. So everybody else, we did a voucher for them so that they could order in pizza or whatever it is and sit at home.

[Aaron]

Interesting.

[Glenn]

And watch the event.

[Aaron]

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[Glenn]

Yes.

[Aaron]

And the more work you put in, the more you get out. I think like, I think it's, it's. Well, it's some of the best work I've ever done at the company, but it's a lot of work. How do you work those into the business?

[Glenn]

So when we're having a meeting started off and we talk about it every month we have, we highlight a value. And so then for example, every Monday morning we have a superintendent's meeting. And so then one of our guys starts it off and talks about it recognition. And so we have people call out people when they've done something. And then at the safety meetings we have something that we, we give them and recognize them in front of their peers. The other thing is, so we got a food truck.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

That we take out to the jobs and when everybody's gathered around for lunch. We did that a couple times last year. We recognized somebody that went above and beyond and it was, the success was great. Like if you, these people just glow when you recognize them.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And so now we're really going to push that more this year than when we come out with the food truck to recognize somebody.

[Aaron]

But how do you so your superintendents meeting, is it partially in person, partially remote? All remote?

[Glenn]

Nope. If people are in the office, we all go in the conference room. Everybody else calls in, calls in.

[Aaron]

How do you get superintendents to share in the first place?

[Glenn]

Well, and it doesn't have to be just the superintendent that recognize. Anybody can recognize somebody, but it's just constantly bringing it up.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, and back again. It's a top down thing. And we've gotten great buy in because back to a few years ago, some of these superintendents we were exhausted and they've seen the benefits of the core values making their jobs easier.

[Aaron]

But it starts like in the beginning maybe you recognizing a superintendent for example, for one of the core values to kind of get it going.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Yeah, that makes sense. It's also recognition is so much fun. It's really, really cool. Like I get, I still get fooled all the time with construction workers especially like oil patch or like in North Dakota. I feel like people are just built a little differently like to put up with winter. They're just like, like there's a toughness to people in North Dakota we're hardy yeah, like construction's tough, mining's tough on its own. But then you go to North Dakota and it's minus 30 with 60 mile per hour wind. You're like, all right on a nice day. Yeah, yeah. These people are built different, man. And you almost get fooled into thinking like, well, they don't care about recognition. Or these are like big tough guys. Like they're, you know, they all big beards and tattoos and just rough and tumble and grew up in sometimes rough places and drink a lot of bush light or whatever it is. Like you, you almost, you forget that they're people in a way, if that makes sense. Or at least I get like. And I don't say that like, oh yeah, they're just like these construction workers. They're not people. Like I'm small, like I'm little. I get intimidated by these big guys. But then they'll say something or you'll do something or you'll crack a joke or something like that. And where you recognize them in a certain way and they're playing along too. And you realize like, wait a minute, everybody's just like, everybody's a little kid inside.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Like we're all like little 6 year olds just looking for approval, looking for praise. Like we want to be told we're doing a great job and that's, that's all you need to do in a lot of ways. Like, it's not that hard, but it's, it's quite rare.

[Glenn]

Any kind of recognition, you know, something I've been doing. Now the guys are back at work and I've been going out, so went and bought a couple of cases of Snickers. Nice and great, you know, I'll stop them, you know, throw them the Snickers and say, hello, how's it going? Yeah, just little things like that. That's 30 seconds, you know. And you talked about that before, about that, just that second of recognition and how impactful that is.

[Aaron]

Sure. How do you. Going back to hiring? How did you get more disciplined with hiring?

[Glenn]

Hire slow, fire, fast, you know, making sure that they're a good culture fit.

[Aaron]

Sure is. And how do you do that through.

[Glenn]

The interview, you know, asking the right questions. Most of the guys are coming as referrals.

[Aaron]

Okay.

[Glenn]

So that already is a, a big filter there.

[Aaron]

Is that how it used to be?

[Glenn]

Yes. Yeah, but it was back when we were hiring anybody.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

Now guys are seeing the benefits of this here. You know, they don't want to bring somebody on that is not a good fit and put their name on them.

[Aaron]

Sure. Okay.

[Glenn]

The other thing that we're doing is when we're onboarding, we bring them in on Mondays and go through our core values, go through company history. We take them out for lunch, and I make sure that I'm in the office on Mondays, so I go for lunch with them and get to interact with these guys so they get to meet me, you know, so it's not first time out of the job. Oh, it's the boss. And.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Get that nervousness or whatever, you know. So now when I see them. Well, we had lunch, you know.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

So just. I think it makes me more approachable.

[Aaron]

Yeah. 100. Oh, that's 100 true. Yeah. That's quite interesting. Have you got pushback through this process over the past few years?

[Glenn]

No. Even who I was talking about, Joe, who's been with us for, like, 35 years. He's 60 years old. He has bought into this and embraced it and sees the. The value of it, you know, and he was that hard driven, stereotypical construction guy.

[Aaron]

Sure. Yeah. It's. And that, again, that's what I find so interesting with what you all are doing. Like, you're doing it in a. You're doing it in a very rough and tumble environment. This is North Dakota. This is. This is. It's the Bakken, right?

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Yeah, it's the Bakken. Like, this is. This. This is. This is. This is rough and tumble. Like, this is. This is as traditional. Just get it done, keep your head down. Let's just make it happen as it gets in a lot of ways. And it still works in an environment like that, which I think is really exciting. Like, it's proof it. It works anywhere. Like it's. And not. That's, like the hardest. And I say that. I say that in a complimentary way because, like, I go up to the mines, the. The Falkirk. Falkirk and Freedom Mines, and it's just like, they're the nicest people in the world, but they're built different. It just again, just to do the work out there. Like, they have stories about their, you know, hard hats freezing to their heads. It's like I've. I've never had a hard hat freezed my head. I don't think I ever will. It's just. It's just, to me, it's crazy. But that to them is just like. That's every day. That's just another winner.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

And so the older guys have really bought into this here, and the younger guys love it.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

And you talk about, you know, the younger guys coming up, that's what they want. And to keep and retain those guys, you got to treat them, you know, with respect.

[Aaron]

But I think it's what everybody wants. Like, I think. I think the older guys, at face value, don't want it because they didn't come up that way and they got their asses kicked coming up. And they think everybody should. Everybody should do what they did coming up because they had to endure the abuse in all different ways. And so that's just fair. Like, it's. It's. It's unfair if somebody comes up in a different. Like, it's a. It's a fairness thing. Again, it's going back to, like, we're on the playground. Well, it's like, I had to, you know, eat my vegetables before I got on, you know, got to play on the swing. Like, why does Jimmy just get to go play on the swing? Like, he didn't eat his vegetables? It's like. It's a dumb example, but I feel like that's.

[Glenn]

They were in doctors or they were hazed, you know, or whatever you want to call it. That was just part of it, you know.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah. My time did my time. Yeah. And so everybody should do theirs. But it's like, well, but did you enjoy your time? Like, was that fun? Like, no, it wasn't. In a lot of ways, there's. I think there's value to some of it. And. But a lot of guys, like, they're not sitting around saying, that was. Those are the fondest years of my life. So it's like, well, maybe there's a different way to do it. And the old. It's exciting to see the older guys come around to this because they win, too. Like, if they're not turning people over every week, if there's not new people coming in to fill seats that keep getting empty, like, they can just get more done. They can be more. Like, the whole company does better. They can make more money making their life easier. Makes their life easier. Yeah. They're the first ones that win.

[Glenn]

And it goes back to what I was telling you about with the culture where we had superintendents that were, you could just tell, exhausted.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

So they're really seeing the benefit of all of that.

[Aaron]

Yeah. I think I made a post the other day. I think the industry is exhausted in a lot of ways for this reason. But I think, like, the industry as a whole just seems. Seems beat down, which bums me out, because it doesn't have to be that way.

[Glenn]

And those that are changing I look at this as a competitive advantage.

[Aaron]

Totally.

[Glenn]

You know, in, in some ways, like I'm selfish, you know, with all the stuff that like you are, you're doing, you know, it's like, I want that offer for me, you know, I don't want anybody else to know about it. But eventually it is good for everybody because industry wide, it'll be good.

[Aaron]

Yeah. But like, if your competitor is also doing this, developing their people and recruiting effectively and retaining their people, now they don't have to take your people. Like, it's not as. It's not like the revolving door in a way. You're not just trading people back and forth.

[Glenn]

Oh, we had to grease the hinges on the door. Yeah, I know.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And I'm sure, especially in a place like that, like there's, there's only so many places you can work. So I'm sure everybody worked everywhere.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

At a certain point.

[Glenn]

In.

[Aaron]

You guys are an interesting market too, because you do have the oil field, the oil patch, before it started to really blow up. When, like 2010, if I had to.

[Glenn]

Guess, probably around 2007, plus or minus is when it really started to ramp up.

[Aaron]

And that was because of fracking.

[Glenn]

That was a big part of it. Yeah. They figured out the technology, you know, they knew that the, the oil was there. They just didn't figure out how to crack the code. And so they figured out the fracking and it just took off.

[Aaron]

And saying it took off is, I think, an understatement.

[Glenn]

Oh, it was absolute chaos.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Glenn]

I enjoyed every minute of it. I don't ever need to do it again.

[Aaron]

It was like when they're, when it's national news how much the local McDonald's is paying, you know, like, wait, there's something. There's something crazy going on here.

[Glenn]

Well, in the Bakken was known worldwide.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

So the North Dakota Petroleum Council puts out a news clipping every day for yesterday, what was in the papers. And I mean, there was stuff from all over the world, articles in the London Times talking about, you know, western North Dakota. You know, it was crazy, the amount of people that flooded here. Well, then about that time, you know, then the market crashed and we had people from all over the country flooding into western North Dakota.

[Aaron]

Oh, sure. Because it aligned. Oh, wow. Yeah. It was just like. That was like the same timing.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

It was.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Glenn]

When I talk about it being chaos, it was absolutely. People living in campers, people living in tents.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

You know, housing was so terribly expensive, so hard to find, you know, so then those of us. We ended up getting in the housing business in the sense of putting people up.

[Aaron]

It's. Yeah. I, early on we worked with the company Kayle and they told me plenty of stories from. They were there and we're in Williston, Montana, more so now. But yeah, they had plenty of stories from Williston.

[Glenn]

The Williston Walmart looked like a campground.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah. And they, I mean they would say, you know, they, people would drive these fifth wheels in and then you'd get, especially in winter, like you just kind of slide off the road and then you just leave the fifth wheel, like, just like, just leave. Because people are making so much money too that like it just, just like the, there was just no, no, no rational thought.

[Glenn]

Oh, absolutely not. Rent in western North Dakota was comparable to Manhattan.

[Aaron]

That's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. So you're, you, you're from North Dakota. You've always been there?

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Family business has always, always been there. When did the company start? How long ago?

[Glenn]

1967.

[Aaron]

67? Yep. The oil business has always been there, kind of.

[Glenn]

So the discovery well was in the 50s when oil was discovered and it's always been up and down. So in 1967, Bronco Brothers comes from my dad and my uncle and so they were ranching and my grandpa was involved as well. So there just wasn't enough there for three to survive on. So they saw a demand for it. They also needed some work done themselves. So they bought a D7 and a pull type scraper and started doing dams and dugouts for themselves and for local ranchers. The oil came along and my dad saw an opportunity there. So in the 70s started building locations and then the oil took a downturn. Well, now these counties had money from oil impact, so they started building and improving their roads. So we started doing road work and then started to work in the mines and the power plants. So that's kind of the evolution of how, how that all happened. And then the Bakken came along and we exploded. Like I said, you know, we peak construction before that, you know, maybe 50ish people.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know.

[Aaron]

Yeah. So but you're, I mean you're one of the local companies, local contractors. You're just doing your thing, building stuff, but at a, at a steady clip. And then the Bakken comes online and now everybody needs everything almost overnight.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

And now you're, you're probably being called everywhere to do everything and you're growing like crazy. But then that creates a big degree of chaos that I don't think people like people that have not been in a growing business can't totally appreciate and understand because everybody's like, well, you know, business is up, you're making more money. It's like, well, yeah, but at what cost?

[Glenn]

You have to make a lot of money because of all the slippage, all the, you know.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Money covers up a lot of sins.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How long did that last? That was 2007 to what, what like 13.

[Glenn]

So there were some ups and downs until about 2015, you know, in between, like that 2007-15, it was just crazy. But up there were a couple up and downs after 15 it took a pretty good dive, you know. So right now in the Bakken, there's probably about 35 rigs drilling and it's been holding pretty steady at that number. Plus or minus a few. Yeah, but I think peak. Oh man, I used to know this number but like around 200 rigs.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Glenn]

Were drilling and so they were punching a hole every about three to four weeks. So that rig at that time was moving every three to four weeks. So like you just stay ahead of the rigs.

[Aaron]

Building pads.

[Glenn]

Building pads.

[Aaron]

Interesting. So you'd build roads, pads, you'd build wherever they're going to next.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

You'd prepare it, prepare the land. They'd come in and you would just, they would just tell you where to go.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Interesting. Would you just drive your equipment there? You wouldn't even need to transport stuff, would you?

[Glenn]

So. Yeah, scrapers that back in the day we used to be able to rode them just about everywhere. It's getting tougher now where we got to haul them more.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah. Especially when it, like this time of.

[Glenn]

Year when everything's in the spring, load restrictions, it gets really tough.

[Aaron]

Expensive, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, it's. And these like the, the drilling, it got a lot more advanced.

[Glenn]

Yes.

[Aaron]

The, the drilling they do with fracking is pretty incredible. It's pretty mind boggling what they're doing, how far under the ground they're going and then they're not just. What is it like? It's like 10,000ft.

[Glenn]

About 10,000ft. They'll go down and then they hit the curve and then they'll drive. Yep. You know, another 10,000ft, but they're even starting to go out, you know, 15,000ft. And they're drilling these wells. Geez. Like 10 days or something like that. I mean, it's crazy.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Glenn]

I remember when Marathon drilled a well in under 30 days and they were just ecstatic. And now, you know, they're 10 odd days, they're drilling them in.

[Aaron]

And you're not just building the pads at this point, but you're serving the oil companies in all different ways.

[Glenn]

All the maintenance work, you know, that goes along with it.

[Aaron]

Yeah. That must have been crazy. I honestly wish I could have seen it.

[Glenn]

It was like, you know, prior to that, we'd buy a piece of equipment and you got to know the piece of equipment, you know, in and out. We were buying stuff so fast like that you'd forget about it, I'm sure.

[Aaron]

Oh, I'm sure you just blew stuff all over.

[Glenn]

Yeah, we went, you know, from. Oh, we had about eight scrapers prior, you know, to just under 50.

[Aaron]

Really?

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Holy. 50 scrapers. Y these 627s most well, 627s.

[Glenn]

31S and 37s.

[Aaron]

Wow. So it was all scraper work. Yep, for the pads. Interesting, because everything's pretty flat already, isn't it?

[Glenn]

Well, no, there's some pretty good topography in North Dakota. I mean, you can have pads that you'll move a couple hundred thousand yards of dirt on. Well, that's on the extreme side. Yeah, but you'll have to come out there. I'll take you for a drive someday.

[Aaron]

I would like to see it. No, I, I, the whole oil thing's, I think, fascinating. I couldn't be more. I'm, I'm. I live in civil construction and infrastructure, but I love commodities. I love oil. I love, like, I just love how the world works. And oil, I don't think gets. It's very demonized right now. But it's like, it's how the world works. Like, I, it's so silly to sit here and criticize it because we all depend on it in a thousand different ways.

[Glenn]

Right now it's more than gas and diesel.

[Aaron]

It's way beyond that. Like, we live in an oil world. That's the. How the whole world around us works. And fracking as well is, I mean, fracking is really why the United States economy has done as well as it has over the past two decades.

[Glenn]

Hugely impactful.

[Aaron]

Yeah. I like it. Doesn't get nearly enough credit. And honestly, if we want to bring manufacturing back to the States, like, fracking is a big part of that. Gas is a big part of that. Natural gas. Like, we, our power has been dramatically changed just because of the availability of gas now, all because of fracking. Like, we overnight, almost overnight, become the world's top producer of oil and gas. And not, I mean, decades ago there were conversations where like, we have no more oil. We're gonna have to buy it all from the Middle East. And it's like now we're sitting here still number one in the world because of the Bakken, because of. In Texas, because of like Marcellus in Pennsylvania. Like these few regions in the United States are so rich and producing so much that it's propped up our entire economy.

[Glenn]

And what they're extracting right now, I believe it's only in the single digits that they're able to retrieve. So as technology, you know, gets better, that's going to increase. You know, right now, North Dakota, I think, is doing about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day.

[Aaron]

Wow. Just in North Dakota.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

It's so crazy. Yeah. And then the. The floor falls out from. So it ramps way up and gets crazy. And then the whole. The tap just gets shut off in the mid 2010s and then it probably for you guys goes in the other direction as far as work. Yeah.

[Glenn]

Yeah. So. Well, that's one of the things about. Know I'm a big diversity guy of doing lots of work. We're not just an oil field. You know, we're doing road and highway work, power plant work, oil field work, and that flattens out those peaks and valleys a ton. So like you asked me earlier, percentage of oil field work versus construction work, you know, it varies so much every year.

[Aaron]

Yeah, it's. The oil field work's interesting too, because when it's good, it's really good. And then it can just turn off overnight. Like they can just. Cause that's why they love contractors and that's why they don't own stuff is. Cause they can just like. Maybe not even a phone call, maybe even like an email or maybe not even that.

[Glenn]

The phone just quit. Serenity.

[Aaron]

It's probably nothing. Yeah, it's just. But you know, because you can look on the news and see where the price of oil's at. And like. So it happened mid-2010s and then again in 2020, it just. The floor just fell out from underneath oil industry because everybody thought the whole world was going to be. Demand was done for a long time. And then. Well, it turns out no people still need oil even when they're at home and price goes back up. And then now it's starting to fall again.

[Glenn]

Yep.

[Aaron]

It seems. Which is. It's just up, down, up, down. I first saw it, I. We were working with a contractor that rented equipment in west Texas in 2018, maybe. Maybe 2019. So it was when oil was Good. Like it was really good. I feel like at that point.

[Glenn]

What year was that? 18.

[Aaron]

18. 19. Yeah, yeah. Before. Before. Before COVID and we were in West Texas. I had never really been to west. I'd driven through West Texas, but when you drive through it, you don't think twice about it. But just the. I mean we drove around for days and you'd drive around for 12 hours and on, on just dirt roads. You just be out in the middle of these oil fields like Exxon and these big companies and you'd see the rigs out in the distance and they were working for contractors building pads. So they'd be renting like D8 to contractors building, building these pads out in the middle of the desert. And it was just the crate. Like one of the craziest things I've still ever seen. Like you'd be at the gas station at, you know, 3:30 in the morning and it is slammed with 23 year olds, F450s welders on the back of them all like just like a line for every pump, you know, F450. F450, F1 Rams and Chevy's and like all these big fancy trucks and just a bunch of kids.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

And you're just like. And you're not. You're out in the middle of nowhere like, what is this? What is going on?

[Glenn]

Absolutely crazy.

[Aaron]

It's gang. It's just gangbusters. Yeah. And they were like, hey, we're gonna one day, like we're gonna meet. We're just gonna have lunch at the Ford dealership. Just meet us at the Ford dealership. Midland. I'm like, what are you talking about? Ford dealership? Like, what, what, what's there? And you go to the Ford dealership in Midlands and it's like a country club. You're like, what is this? And they have this whole restaurant at the Ford dealership. It's like, oh, of course. Like I'm in Midland.

[Glenn]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Ford's doing just fine in Midland, Texas. But it was just very eye opening. Like, oh, here's how the world works. Like this is this patch of land, this dusty patch of land in the middle of nowhere that everybody in a city has never thought twice about is like the grease for all the gears for all of society, whether people know it or not. And to me, I just think that's the coolest thing.

[Glenn]

You want to see something interesting, Go on to Google Earth. Google Earth and look at all the dotted that is out there in west Texas of all the pads.

[Aaron]

It's crazy.

[Glenn]

It's absolutely crazy.

[Aaron]

Well, or flying into Midland at night with all flares, it looks like a city. It looks. If you don't know what you're looking at and you're high up enough. I thought it was a city at first. I was like, where are we? We're flying into Midland. There's not. There's not a whole lot out here. And then as you start to get lower, you start to realize, like, wait a minute. Those are all the flares. Like, that's. Those are all wells. And it's just. It's just. It seems like it goes forever. Just the scale of it. It's like, man, they've poked that many holes in the earth, each one of those is producing something or has produced something. It's pretty incredible. So you guys do a little bit of everything. Have you always done a little bit everything since beginning of time?

[Glenn]

Well, that's kind of what I was telling you. When my dad and uncle started, it was, you know, doing so conservation work. Dams, dugouts, things like that. And then as demands, you know, came needs, you know, we started doing more, you know.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

The oil field, you know, starting doing road and highway work. Doing work in the power plants.

[Aaron]

The power plants. When did they build the first one? Boy, because that was a big deal.

[Glenn]

Yeah. So the very first one probably was built back in the 50s, but that's out. Really got busy. I would say in the late 60s until the early 80s. There was power plant construction that was going on.

[Aaron]

Like the one I know, the one in Beulah was a really big deal. I know Ames had a big part.

[Glenn]

So Ames did the work on Antelope Valley and then also for Great River Energy there at Washburn. Yeah, they did those two sites.

[Aaron]

And they have. It's not just power. They have gasification too.

[Glenn]

So there's Dakota Gas, where they make synthetic natural gas out of lignite.

[Aaron]

Uhhuh. Which is fascinating.

[Glenn]

And it's not only synthetic natural gas. There's a ton of things that they make out of that. There's fertilizer. They capture the CO2, and that gets pipelined to Canada and injected into oil wells up there for enhanced oil recovery.

[Aaron]

Really?

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

CO2 for Enhanced Oil recovery.

[Glenn]

Yeah. Squeezing the oil out of the ground.

[Aaron]

Because you're building pressure.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

What? Wow.

[Glenn]

Yeah. And so when we were talking about technology and in the Bakken and only retrieving a small percentage.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, there's talk of doing enhanced oil recover there. And one of them is doing CO2 injection.

[Aaron]

That's incredible. Yeah. Can you explain fracking for people that don't understand fracking?

[Glenn]

Well, when you're going into the formation, it's rock. Like, it's like concrete.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

So, like, you could hold it in your hand and you don't even get dirty. So, you know, they drill that through the formation and then they set off charges to fracture the. The rock, and then they pump a fluid mixture down there with sand, and then the sand holds those cracks open so that oil can be extracted out of them. Yeah, that's kind of. That's kind of the layman's. I mean, I. I'm not involved with that a bunch, but that's what my understanding is.

[Aaron]

Yeah, it's. There's a lot of science to it. But you're like, traditionally, your drilling was far above the shale because traditionally speaking, they didn't know how to get anything out of the shale.

[Glenn]

Correct.

[Aaron]

It was just. It was just rock. And you didn't even have the technology to drill the 10,000ft because that alone.

[Glenn]

And they knew they were drilling through it and they knew that Debakken was there.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

But they just thought it was an unproducible formation, you know. So the other formations that they were going into, they were able to extract the oil much easier.

[Aaron]

I see. Yeah, but you're. Yeah, the oil and gas is within the rock and the rock is. It's rock. Like, it's not like a sponge.

[Glenn]

Like it's.

[Aaron]

No, no, it's straight up rock.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Then you're. Yeah, you're just. You're. And then. And then you drill, you know, down and then a few miles out, and you can then fracture it all along that formation. And now I guess it's just a lot more cost effective because you can fracture this whole area and extract the gas and oil. You know, this. I'm just explaining for people that don't. From just one hole poked in the surface, now you have this recovery from 2 to 3 miles.

[Glenn]

Exactly.

[Aaron]

And you can go in different directions.

[Glenn]

Yes. From that one hole, you know, when this all started, there was typically just one hole on a pad. Well, now, you know, on the high end, you know, you can have maybe upwards of 30 wells on one pad.

[Aaron]

In all different directions.

[Glenn]

In all different directions. You know, I would say that maybe half a dozen is probably pretty. Pretty common. So now we're building a pad that's going to have six wells on it. So we're building one sixth, you know, of what we were before.

[Aaron]

So.

[Glenn]

So now the drilling rig will sit there, punch Them holes and then the rig will actually walk or they skid it from hole to hole.

[Aaron]

Interesting. So. But all on the same pad.

[Glenn]

All in the same pad. So it's become way more efficient drilling one or you're building one pad now that rig stays there instead of having to completely tear it down and take it to the next job. You just move it maybe however many times.

[Aaron]

That's amazing.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

The pads, are you building to a design or is it like we just need it flat?

[Glenn]

Nope, nope. They give you a design.

[Aaron]

So it's all designed by engineering.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

It's like you're building a parking lot, correct.

[Glenn]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Huh. So you can do that, all that with GPS and everything.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

But it's kind of just a rectangle.

[Glenn]

Basically. Just a flat rectangle. You know, you got a few percent on it for drainage.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

But yeah, there's not a lot to building oil fill pads.

[Aaron]

Sure. And then the road infrastructure.

[Glenn]

Then the road. Yep.

[Aaron]

But it's just dirt. Do you have to put subgrade or like rock or anything down on it?

[Glenn]

Yeah. So we got what you call scoria. It's the red rock.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

So that's what we surface it with that or with gravel. And then a lot of locations they'll cement treat it depending on soil conditions.

[Aaron]

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. The cement treatment that's now standard everywhere. Like even five years ago, when I first started out, I would only see it in like South Carolina where it's just a swamp. And now it's everywhere.

[Glenn]

Just for time seeing more and more of it.

[Aaron]

Yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah. They. Even in places where you're like, you don't. They don't really need it, but they just want it faster. They want. They want a piece of land faster to develop, especially like the. Do you guys have a data center stuff where you are yet?

[Glenn]

Starting to see some. Has it really taken off. But I believe that it's going to get crazy.

[Aaron]

I'm sure. Especially with the power plants up there.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

And the cold.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Yeah. Yeah. Because we got affordable electricity.

[Aaron]

Yep.

[Glenn]

And it's cool out. As a matter of fact, Basin Electric is getting ready to build a new power plant that's going to be somewhere around 1500 megawatts gas fired just outside of Williston.

[Aaron]

Really?

[Glenn]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Wow. That's a big deal. Yeah.

[Glenn]

Yeah. It's going to be a several billion dollar project.

[Aaron]

That's a huge project.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And I know they've tried to sunset the other plants, but it's keeps getting pushed back because they're like, hey, we're. This is way too big of a deal here.

[Glenn]

One of the plants did get shut down a few years ago and another one, one of the big ones that's over at Falkirk Mine, that plant was going to get. Yeah, they shut down.

[Aaron]

They tried to. Yeah.

[Glenn]

And then they can.

[Aaron]

Down the road.

[Glenn]

Then a great River Energy that owned it prior then sold it to a company called Rainbow Energy.

[Aaron]

That's right.

[Glenn]

And so now Rainbow, which is a local North Dakota company, owns it.

[Aaron]

Interesting.

[Glenn]

So, yeah, they came in and. And saved it.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Because it's. The plant's just fine. Like, it's not that old of a plant in the grand scheme of things.

[Glenn]

No, it was built in the. Geez, I don't know, earlier 80s. It went online.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And then the mine. I mean, the mine can go forever.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

The amount of coal they have up there is a lot of North Dakota is just sitting on coal.

[Glenn]

Yeah. So I've seen the stat that we have, like 800 years of coal.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, Wyoming at the current. At the current rate.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah. The. I. I went out to, Yeah. A coal mine in Australia and they have about a thousand years of coal there, but yet they're shutting the plant down within the next year or two. At least they say they are. But when I was there, you can see it's pretty cool. They've showed. They've shown me North Dakota as well. I feel like when we were up there, I don't know what his name was. He was. He's the manager of Coyote Creek.

[Glenn]

Oh, it was Brendan Brinkman.

[Aaron]

Brendan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we went to, like, the local Bull Restaurant. I mean, there's one.

[Glenn]

Yep. I've eaten there.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you don't, you know, you don't. You don't choose where you're eating for dinner. You go. Or they have a Dairy Queen too.

[Glenn]

I think they have a. There's a couple there. But you went. I think it's Country Kittle on Main Street.

[Aaron]

Yeah, Country. That's exactly where we were. And I remember he showed us on his. You can pull up the power generation for North Dakota and for surrounding states on your phone. Like, they have these dashboards that I didn't know existed until then. But you can see exactly what percentage of the state's power is coming from different energy sources instantaneously at any given time. And it's quite interesting because, I mean, those power plants are very valuable. They're producing a ton of power for quite a few states. Not just North Dakota, but.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

A lot of it goes into Minnesota.

[Aaron]

Twin Cities. Yeah. Yeah. And when we were at this power plant in Australia, we pulled it up, it was a cloudy day and it was like 80% of the state's power was coming from this power plant. It's a. It's a really big plant. I mean, they produce it's like 15 million tons of coal a year all into this plant. So it's like pretty good size. But you just look at it, you're like. And they're shutting it down when A few years from now, let's replace it. And they're getting 80% of their power. Like, how? I'm not, I'm not. I'm not that smart. But like, how does that math. Like where. How does that work? And the answer is it doesn't. So they keep prolonging it, which I think is good for everybody.

[Glenn]

Yeah, well. And there was a nuclear plant that was in Minnesota that was on the docket to get shut down. And they kept kicking the can and kicking the can and oh, in the last year or so, they made an announcement that they're not going to shut it down, that they're going to keep it operating because, you know, they realize that there's no backup.

[Aaron]

Yeah, wait a minute. Yeah, we. We actually need this power. Do you guys have a lot of wind in North Dakota?

[Glenn]

We do, and there's more and more wind coming all the time.

[Aaron]

Have you done some of that work?

[Glenn]

Not really, no. We've bid some projects. Yeah, but we haven't done any of.

[Aaron]

That because it's kind of similar to building pads. Yep, it's very similar. You're just building a rectangle. They're building a square.

[Glenn]

Building the trail to get to it.

[Aaron]

And building a trail to get to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But is it typically bigger? Like, some of the bigger developers do their own work.

[Glenn]

Wanzic is really, really big in North Dakota.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Blatner, Blattner, Mortensen's next door too.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And we've quoted projects for them, but haven't been successful in any of that.

[Aaron]

They like to self perform a lot of stuff, so.

[Glenn]

Perform. But they do do contract out some of that as well.

[Aaron]

Do they? Yeah, I would, I would think North Dakota is a good place for wind turbines. Yeah, there's a lot of nothing.

[Glenn]

I'm kind of a coal guy.

[Aaron]

I believe it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, I'm. Now I'm like, I'm just pro energy. I feel like just we need more and more Energy the United States does. And the more we can get, just the more energy we can get in the more places, I think the better off we are. And so I don't necessarily have a problem with the wind generation, but to think it's just, I don't, I don't like the black and white. I don't like you're either team fossil fuel or team renewable. Like you can't. And you can't be in the middle. You got to pick a team. It's like. Well, I don't know. I think there's, I think there's a conversation for both. Like, I think both have their place. I think they're both great for different things. And the more we have, I think the better off we are as a country.

[Glenn]

Yeah. And you know, wind does have its place and it's good. But when you look at like coal. Coal is very inexpensive.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

It's baseload and it employs a ton of people compared to wind.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

So good paying jobs. And like you talk about Beulah, if it wasn't for coal, there'd be nothing in, in that town.

[Aaron]

No. And. And when you say good paying jobs, they're good paying jobs.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Yeah. Great benefits. So, you know, like that plant that they were talking about shutting down, you know, I think that coal mine has, you know, several hundred people. The power plant probably has several hundred. So maybe 500 people, give or take, would have, you know, been out of a great paying job that would have had a big impact on all those small communities. Bismarck, Minot.

[Aaron]

Well, and all the, all the businesses supporting the mines and power plants as well. Like you've got, you know, 500 direct deployment, but indirect is thousands of people serving these plants. And I'm telling you, like, I don't know what North American coal is putting in their water, but they are the nicest people in the world there.

[Glenn]

They are great people. In fact, I was at Coteau here a couple weeks ago visiting with the guys and yeah, they're just, they're good people.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, over at Coyote Creek, we built that road from the crusher house to the mine.

[Aaron]

Okay.

[Glenn]

Jesus. Been over 10 years. I think it was about a 7 mile haul road that we, we built for them when they opened up that plant.

[Aaron]

So is that what the, the crest coal haulers use?

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

To get back and forth.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

I see. Okay.

[Glenn]

So they contracted that out.

[Aaron]

Did you use ash to stabilize it?

[Joe]

Nope.

[Glenn]

Nope. Because I don't want you gravel.

[Aaron]

Just a bunch of rocks. Because I know they use. They Use ash out there in some for some of their haul roads to stiffen it up and then they reclaim it. But they said it works great.

[Glenn]

Oh yeah, it is.

[Aaron]

Turns out like to concrete.

[Glenn]

Yep. No, you see ash going into a lot of that and then see ash getting mixed in with concrete as well. It makes it stronger.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Flash. Well, and actually that's a problem because I feel like they're now having to import fly ash, I think is what's going on.

[Glenn]

That could be. I'm not familiar with it, but one of the power plants pretty much sells 100% of their ash that goes into concrete.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And then some of the other power plants sell their ash. It goes into the oil field. And when I was talking about when they're drilling the wells and they're displacing that, the wellbore, they mix fly ash with cuttings to stabilize it to halt to the landfills.

[Aaron]

So it's not just runny soup. Yeah, yeah, that's good. No, I, I feel like I was reading somewhere that. Yeah. Because they've shut down so many plants, they don't have enough flash or concrete now.

[Glenn]

And maybe in other parts of the country.

[Aaron]

In other parts of the country. Yeah. You guys have all the flash you need. But it's, it was like Chicago or something like that. Like something in the middle where they're having to import it now from other countries.

[Glenn]

Because that's crazy.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Well, it's just the like the second and third order consequences of decision making. It's like you make this decision here and then. Well, but it, that's my problem with some of those decisions. It's like it's very, in a lot.

[Glenn]

Of ways short sighted with the consequences.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Like it's kind of, it's, it's really spooky. Europe, I think, is a great example of what not to do. Like Germany, perfect example of what not to do because they, they got ahead. They got out ahead of their skis and they decommissioned way too much of their coal fire power plants. And then the whole pickle with Ukraine, Nord, Stream, et cetera, gas supply. And now it's like. And, and they got rid of nuclear. So now what? Now what? And now you. Now what is some of the most expensive power in the world? And now what is the inability to manufacture.

[Glenn]

I was just gonna say that, you know, and to. I didn't realize and appreciate it until we went to Caterpillar and went to the foundry. And during peak loads, like they'll shut the foundry down.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Too expensive. You know, so they run it at night during less demand because it's.

[Aaron]

So it's electric arc.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah, they're. And they're building some of those plants. Same with data centers. Like they're, they're, they're building these data centers where they can get cheap power. But that's, that's the very confusing thing about data centers is they are the most power hungry things we've ever built as a human race. And you have the same people saying we need, they're speaking out of both sides of their mouths like we're, well, we need less fossil fuels, but we need more data centers. And it's like, well, hey, how are you? You're just going to put little mini nuclear reactors everywhere? Like, I don't know. I don't know if that's the best way to go either. I'm, I'm not really sold on that. And maybe you have some top secret way to produce power you haven't shared with the world yet that you've developed underground.

[Glenn]

I'd be on an island right now.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they have it. But it's like these things are power hungry in some states. Like that's why it's coming to a place like North Dakota. Some states have said no more. We don't have the power for more data centers. We would love to take your money, but we just, we can't accommodate another data center. We don't have the power, which is crazy.

[Glenn]

And I was told that new plant that basin is putting up. I don't know this factually, but I've been told or heard that by the time it's up and running that the demand will supersede that.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[Glenn]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron]

They're building small gas plants just for individual data centers as well.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

And we do have some of those in North Dakota, those peak gas fired turbines.

[Aaron]

Mm. Because those are nice. You can turn it on and off.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Which is the good thing about fossil fuel in general. You can turn it on and off.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Ramps up and down really quick. And you know, Mr. Wonderful has been to North Dakota now several times.

[Aaron]

Really?

[Glenn]

And there's lots of talk of, you know, stuff that's coming.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

And it's back, you know, because we got electricity and expensive. It's cool out there. I think in the coming years you're going to really see that explode in North Dakota.

[Aaron]

Well, it's exploding in West Texas right now. Let's go build stuff close to the gas.

[Glenn]

Yep.

[Aaron]

It's like, yeah, that, that Makes sense to me. It's. These data centers, too, are pretty wild, because I know companies, they're. I don't totally understand it, and I don't think the people building it totally understand it either. But they're building these data centers, and they're telling them, though, that they're not like, they're. They're. They're doing the site development, they're building the buildings, they're building the infrastructure, but they're not totally sure what's gonna go inside of it yet, because what goes inside of it doesn't exist yet.

[Glenn]

Huh. Interesting.

[Aaron]

And that's like. That's how they explain it during the pro. Like, they. They admit that they don't know, or some of them are like, well, we're building this, but we know it's gonna be obsolete pretty quickly.

[Glenn]

Crazy.

[Aaron]

It's. It's insane. It's really insane. Yeah, yeah. There was a contractor in here not too long ago doing data center work, and they were telling me about it. I mean, I feel like I know a lot of contractors doing data center work now because there's data centers on.

[Glenn]

Every street corner, and they can't build them fast enough. I mean, like, no, no, no.

[Aaron]

Oh, no.

[Glenn]

Money is not an object. It's like, we need to get up and running yesterday.

[Aaron]

I don't know where the money's coming from, though. It's like, oh, yeah, another $7.3 billion data center. Like, every time I go on LinkedIn, it's like another mult dollar data center announced. And it's like, where are these billions coming? Are they just. This is like monopoly money. I mean. I mean, like that. That power plant back in the day, probably a few hundred million dollars to.

[Glenn]

Build them back in the 80s. Probably. You know what? Yes. I wonder if it wasn't around, give or take, 500 million, because 2 of the power plants did some major retrofits here in the last decade.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And those projects were around 500, just south of 500 million. And I believe I heard him talking that those retrofits cost as much as the initial project did, I'm sure decades ago.

[Aaron]

And those. Those initial projects, that was like, one of the biggest projects ever in this entire region of the United States. And even inflation adjusted, it's like, all right, it's a few billion. But these dentist projects are like. And the manufacturing stuff, too. Like TSMC in Arizona, they said they're spending $150 billion. 150 billion. That's like, what? Where does that money come from? That's That's a lot of zeros.

[Glenn]

Well, you were out there. The project that Ames was doing, I think in South Carolina.

[Aaron]

North Carolina.

[Glenn]

North Carolina, yes.

[Aaron]

4,000 acre site.

[Glenn]

Crazy.

[Aaron]

4,000 acres, like 25 million yards. And a lot of it. Rock. It was like 10 million yards rock or something like that. I mean, they're drilling. Drilling and shooting a lot of it and crushing a lot of it.

[Glenn]

And that's a data center, right?

[Aaron]

No, that was automotive.

[Glenn]

Oh, I thought that was okay.

[Aaron]

That was Toyota. Yeah, yeah, they went. We went to a data center project in Idaho, which was fascinating. It was a rock, all rock. So it was all basalt, like really abrasive, nasty stuff. And they like, I feel like the most economical way to do it because the data center, there are so many utilities underneath it that you need like 15ft underneath the data center for all of your power. Water, duck banks. Like, it's really. It's like a spaghetti bowl underneath this, this building. So you need it. You need it really nice and clean. And so it was. They're building this project on like a giant rock though. And the, the. I think the cheapest way to do it was to import all the material and to build the pad up so that they would have a nice tidy pad to put all their utilities within and then put the data center on top. But instead they. To eliminate truck traffic and import, they over excavated the whole site by like 20ft. So they drilled. I mean, it was a giant. It was like million yards of rock, millions of yards. They drilled the whole rectangle, shot the whole rectangle, excavated the whole rectangle, hauled all of the rock to a crushing setup, monster crushing operation. Crushed it all to like whatever it was, 3 inch minus or something like that. And then hauled it all back into the hole and then placed it all back up to grade back to the existing grade just to make it a nice clean canvas for the utilities, for the data center. And then they would do. And then they would come back through and cut all of their trenches, et cetera, for utilities.

[Glenn]

Interesting.

[Aaron]

It's. It's. It's incredible. It was one of the biggest mobile crushing setups I'd ever seen on a site. I mean, it was like. Because they had to crush millions of yards of material like it was like a quarry.

[Glenn]

So do you have video of that one?

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Do you have it up on YouTube?

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Okay, I'm gonna have to go check that one out. I missed that one.

[Aaron]

I try to. On this. I try to keep things vague. Well, I said it was Idaho, but I mean, it's probably done now as years ago. It's. It was. It was a pretty cool job. But Ames. Ames also, they had like. Do you guys do much crushing?

[Glenn]

No, no, we don't have any crushers. We contract all that out there.

[Aaron]

Do you deal with WD Skopeniak?

[Glenn]

We've quoted some stuff with them. We did a rail project where they provided the material about 10 years ago, but not much.

[Aaron]

Okay. Yeah, they're. They're in Minnesota.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

So quote unquote down the road. Yeah.

[Glenn]

No, we see them run around western North Dakota.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah, they've got. They've got some big spreads, but that's, that's real common now. These big crushing spreads on these jobs just keep as much materials because they're starting. That's another thing is they're building these sites. They're building on very unsuitable sites now, which it's either means it's like a swamp or it's very hilly with enormous cuts and fills, or it's like a giant rock and no one's ever wanted to build there. But the economics now, I was just going to ask.

[Glenn]

I suppose the land is inexpensive enough that it offsets.

[Aaron]

Or the States, like. Well, I mean, we could just give it to you, you know, just like. Because there's all the games politically.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

From a land standpoint, but they're very unsuitable, unsuitable pieces of land. And so just the quantities and then the schedules too. Like, it wouldn't be that ridiculous of a project, but it's like, no, we need it. Like the schedule will be 12 months. We want it three. So then it just. You just get these crazy. All this stuff that makes no sense. That wouldn't have made sense five years ago. That's now almost like standard. And one of those things is these giant mobile crushing spreads on these site development projects.

[Glenn]

Yeah. Well, it's back to it, you know, cost is secondary. It's getting it open. You know, they're willing to pay for it, but.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, demanding timelines, you know. But it costs money.

[Aaron]

Sure. Where do you guys go now? Like, 70% reduction turnover in one year is pretty cool.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Like, that's a pretty good feeling. You're starting to ramp up. It's May. Stuff's probably busy now.

[Glenn]

Yep, we're getting busy. Yeah. It's that time of the year.

[Aaron]

Yeah. What do you ramp up in April? Typically.

[Glenn]

Usually in April. Yeah.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Depending on the weather, you know, we'll.

[Aaron]

Dictate a lot of that and then you have about till Thanksgiving. Ish.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Exactly.

[Aaron]

And it's just blow and go.

[Glenn]

Yeah. Hopefully you can work up until Christmas, but it is North Dakota.

[Aaron]

Yeah. You don't want to count on it.

[Glenn]

Yeah. You know, most of the road projects have completion dates, you know, in November at the latest.

[Aaron]

But what do you. So what are you thinking about now? You've. I feel like you've built this really nice foundation. Where are you going with this season? What are you focused on beyond the.

[Glenn]

Work to keep it going? It takes a lot of work.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

You know, to keep that going. So it's just continue building on what we already have.

[Aaron]

How do you. How do you do that? What are you specifically working on?

[Glenn]

Well, it's things like I said, you know, recognizing people. You know, when we take the food truck out.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And, you know, calling people out. You know, like the other day, like I said, I was stopping, bought a bunch of Snickers and stopped and talked to the guys and, you know, just spend a minute with them and tell them, thank you. Continue to build on that.

[Aaron]

How much? So how much time? Because you got. You've got businesses to run, etc. How much time in a given week are you spending out on site, would you say?

[Glenn]

I'd like to spend more. I like to get out at least one day a week.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Do you schedule that?

[Glenn]

No, usually I try to do is kind of, you know, block a day out and make sure that I don't have nothing going on so that I don't have to hurry back for something.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah. Which then allows you to get to probably a few sites.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Because some of them. Probably a little bit of drive.

[Glenn]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, if we're working up in Williston, you know, you can have a two, three hour drive.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Because it's not like you've got these big, beautiful interstates. Everywhere you need to go. There's some smaller roads.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It's the food truck. How does that work?

[Glenn]

So we used to take just an enclosed trailer and throw the grill and the coolers in it. And I'm like, I really want a food truck. And so went down and talked to one of the trailer dealers, and he had one like, all right. So we ended up buying it. And we take it out, do community events. We take it to the jobs. We try to hit every job. And then when we go to the job, we feed our guys. And then whoever we're working for, we invite them to come. You know, maybe if it's a road. Yep. Like, so we invite the engineers. If it's a County job. You know, we invite the guys from the county. If we're dealing with adjacent landowners, we invite the landowners to come and. Yeah, just.

[Aaron]

And it's like a proper food truck.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Yeah. If you go on our website.

[Aaron]

I didn't. I didn't know this was a thing.

[Glenn]

Yeah. There's some pretty good pictures of it on there. And we drag it around. Then we do other community events. So last week, we had it at the CTE center, and they did a career fair. So we took a thousand hot dogs, and we did 900 hot dogs.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Glenn]

And fed the kids.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Who. Who cooks? Who does the cooking?

[Glenn]

Sean, our safety guy.

[Aaron]

Really? Yep.

[Glenn]

Yeah, he loves it. And I try to go out every time when the food truck goes out myself and, you know, spend time, you know, with the guys or with the community. Another event that we do is Trick or Trunk. So downtown Dickinson, they block off several streets, and businesses will set up and hand out candy for the kids. And I'm like, we can do better than that. Let's take the food truck. And we do a thousand hot dogs in two hours. It's chaos, but I love it. And the thing there is it's something different.

[Aaron]

Okay.

[Glenn]

You know, so now it makes this more memorable. It's like, all right, we didn't just give you a candy bar. You got a hot dog.

[Aaron]

So it's branded Baranco.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Like the food truck.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Glenn]

And so. And it doesn't matter who it is, not just the kids, mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, whoever comes along, we. We do hot dogs, and then we get a bunch of the guys to come help. You're talking about culture before and stuff. You know, I know we got a good culture when the guys bring their wives and kids to help. So we got some of the wives that come and help. We got some of the kids that show up and help. Because it takes a lot of people to do a thousand hot dogs in two hours. I bet it's one hot dog, like, every eight seconds.

[Aaron]

Wow. Wow. You just bottle the hot dogs.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

So no one's. No one's paying for.

[Glenn]

No one's paying. Yeah. So, yeah. So we're not a food truck where we can do retail. It's all. All giveaway. So we're going to do touch a truck here. I don't know when this is going to post, but in a couple weeks. So we'll take a piece of equipment down, let the kids check that out, and then we have the food truck set up there, too, where kids get a hot dog. And we go do different industry like golf events. You know, we'll set up on one of the holes. And so one of the fun things we do is for the API. It's a petroleum institute. We do Chicago Dogs.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Glenn]

And so now we've gotten famous for doing Chicago Dogs, and guys look forward to getting them.

[Aaron]

Getting advanced.

[Glenn]

Yep.

[Aaron]

How often take. Do you take the food truck to job sites?

[Glenn]

You know, I just heard the number last year we did, and I think we did just shy of 30 events last year.

[Aaron]

That's a lot.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Glenn]

So it was well into the 20s.

[Aaron]

At least once a week.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Yeah. And different things. So, like, we did one last year, and we'll probably do it again. They asked us, somebody we knew, they were having a suicide walk, recognition walk. And so their food truck canceled on them last minute. They called me up. They're like, hey, could you come do this here? I'm like, absolutely.

[Aaron]

Wow.

[Glenn]

You know, so we went and set up at one of the parks in Dickinson.

[Aaron]

And do you just have, like, a food truck line item on your budget now?

[Glenn]

Yep. We used to not.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

At our cfo, Allison was like, you know, we should come up with a budget for this.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Glenn]

So then giving away thousands of hot.

[Aaron]

Dogs, that adds up.

[Glenn]

When we don't only do hot dogs. Like, we do, like, a lot of fun stuff, you know, like, so we do the Chicago dogs. We do that golf tournament. We do biscuits and gravy and bacon, you know, because the guys were probably out last night or the night before, so, you know, some biscuits and gravy.

[Aaron]

That is.

[Glenn]

Helps. Yeah. We do a lot of. A lot of cool stuff instead of just hot dogs or hamburgers. Oh, it's a class. Like, yeah, everybody loves it.

[Aaron]

That's the kind of stuff. I don't understand why it's not more common. Because it's somewhat simple. Like, it's not that complicated. Everybody loves it. It's different.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Why not? Like, the goodwill you get from that is incredible with your team, but then with the community. Yeah, exactly. Build all the goodwill with the community is huge.

[Glenn]

And so then when we take the food truck out, we don't do it at the touch truck. We do it the touch truck. It's the trick or trunk. But we do T shirts. I don't know how many thousand T shirts we gave out last year, but we do a new shirt every year. So It'd be like 20, 25 food truck tour.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

And then we have somebody do up a logo and give away a Bunch of branded shirts.

[Aaron]

That's great. People, people love free shirts. Hats. People love free food.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Give them free food, they will flock. And to the tune of thousands of people requesting hot dogs. Yeah.

[Glenn]

So I mean, I don't know how many thousands and thousands of shirts that we've given away over the years.

[Aaron]

That's amazing. Wow. So there's a lot of people. Will you see them around?

[Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron]

Since it's not that big. So when you're at the grocery store or something.

[Glenn]

Yeah, we do at the grocery store, at the gym. You know, my daughter was in class one day and she's like, hey, there's a guy wearing a Bronco and she's in another town going to college.

[Aaron]

That's pretty cool. Do you give your people Bronco stuff, like apparel and all that?

[Glenn]

Yep, we do. So, you know, we give out different swag, you know, all the time. We have a company store online where they can go and then they get credits to use to purchase stuff.

[Aaron]

So how did they get the credits? So with time. Like every year?

[Glenn]

Yeah, with time in every year you get so many dollars.

[Aaron]

Okay. But they get to go select what, whatever they want. Interesting. How do you run the store?

[Glenn]

So that's. It's all online. So it's within a local shop. And they built it all for us and did everything and then we just attached it to our website.

[Aaron]

So that's amazing. And so everybody. Then you go out on job sites and everybody's wearing different what. What they want.

[Glenn]

Exactly.

[Aaron]

But still company branded.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Interesting.

[Glenn]

Yeah. Yeah. So if you want a really nice, you know, area something. Yep. You can do that. Or you want a less expensive no name brand. You can buy stuff.

[Aaron]

Sure. But I think the, again, the, the ability to choose think takes it a lot further. It's like they're the ones that are wearing it to work. And you people are pretty particular with what they work in for good reason because you're working in it. And especially when it's cold, you want, like, that's when apparel really becomes important. You want, you want really good stuff, but you want it to be what you want.

[Glenn]

And even if it's your street clothes, you know, that's, you know, if you want a nice polo.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, back to, you know, we're all. We like certain stuff the way it feels, you know, and we let them pick that out, what they like.

[Aaron]

Sure. It's all simple stuff.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It's not that complicated.

[Glenn]

And it goes a long, long way. And it's a great feeling when you're out in the community and you see your gear being worn.

[Aaron]

Yeah, but a lot of people have the. Have a negative attitude about that. Like, well, if we get the company shirts or company sweatshirts or whatever, they're just gonna leave and go to the next guy, and then they're gonna take it with, you know, we. All this money on. It's like, wait, wait. Hey, hey, hey. That's actually. But. But now your brand is out in the community. Like, don't you want that? Don't you want. Don't you want to give them a great sweatshirt that they want to wear regardless? Because if they stay with you now, they're wearing it outside of work. And so anywhere they go, they're representing your business, which is advertisement, is brand recognition, etc. And even if they leave, ideally, they're still wearing the sweatshirt because it's comfortable, because it's nice, which is still advertisement. Brand recognition.

[Glenn]

Yeah. You know, even if they take it to Goodwill and give it away because they don't want it anymore. Well, somebody's got it now. Sure.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah. You touched on it before we wrap up the CTE program. When I was out there last time, you took me around that whole program, which, again, this is a small North Dakota town, not something you would expect in a small North Dakota town, but it's a remarkable program.

[Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron]

Huge facility.

[Glenn]

Yeah, it's great. Like, we spend a lot of time interacting with the kids there. So, yeah, the school system was really fortunate. It was an old Halliburton complex, and when Halliburton left the state or the city bought it from them and got a smoking deal on it. Took a lot of money to get it up and running, but still a fraction of the cost what it would have cost otherwise. So there's stuff in there from all the trades, but there's culinary arts they have there. They have a podcast studio there as well. Just a ton of good stuff happening. And, you know, we got involved with them. So where the simulator room is at? That's the Bronco simulator room. And then outside, they have what they call the sandbox. And that's the Bronco sandbox. So they got, you know, mini excavators, you know, mini loaders, different equipment that the kids can get out and play with.

[Aaron]

And the simulators, did you donate those to them?

[Glenn]

Yeah, so we donated a block of money that they use for the simulators.

[Aaron]

Okay.

[Glenn]

Yeah. For a bunch of stuff there.

[Aaron]

Yeah. When I went with you, I don't think the sandbox was there yet. I Think they were still figuring it out, but it's kind of in the middle.

[Glenn]

Exactly.

[Aaron]

Surrounded by concrete.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Yeah, that's a great spot for it.

[Glenn]

Oh, it's a. Yeah. And so then the manufacturers, you know, rdo, Butler Titan Machinery. I'm probably missing some here, but, you know, they've all donated equipment to the school.

[Aaron]

And these are high school kids.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

So they're high school kids. They. And they go to this program after school.

[Joe]

Nope.

[Glenn]

It's part of there, it's accredited. So it's, you know, part of their okay. Everyday program. So, you know, we. I love spending time with them. It's just great. So every spring we take the kids bowling and spend a couple hours with the kids, you know, do pizza. But we invite mom and dad to come. So we get some of the parents that come with as well and we get to talk with the parents. We get to talk with them about our tuition reimbursement program. That we have other opportunities that are out there for money that the state has that can help them if they want to go on to. To school.

[Aaron]

Sure. And they, as part of this program, they get to run the machines.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Wow, that's pretty legit.

[Glenn]

Yeah, it's. Yeah. And so back, like the culinary. They have a chef there. That's incredible. You know, that's.

[Aaron]

I do remember that now. Now that you're saying that. Yeah. And they like, they can cook for people.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Glenn]

So, you know, we interact. Like I said, we were down there last week for the. The career fair. Yeah, this.

[Aaron]

I saw it on social media.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Yeah. So then this Friday we invite the kids out to one of our projects. So they load up the bus, they bring the kids out, we bring the food truck out, feed the kids. Kids get to interact with our guys, walk around the equipment. Our guys will, you know, walk around, talk to the kids about what they're doing, what they're running, and then we'll load them up on the bus and we'll start at the end of the project where nothing has happened yet, and then go through the project and show them the progression of it to the finished portion of it.

[Aaron]

Is it road work or something?

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Yeah, that's.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

So in another way, we get to interact with these kids and already seeing a positive impact with labor, you know, in another five years. Yeah, it's going to be. Definitely have a big impact. You know, we got several of the kids working for us now and a couple that have come out of the program.

[Aaron]

That's incredible. That's really Cool.

[Glenn]

Yeah. And it's about building, you know, these, you know, how you want to say, you know, planting our next generation.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah. And, and even, just, even if they don't come in, like, I feel like engaging with the community, like that is so positive.

[Glenn]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron]

That's a really big deal. This, the tuition program, how does that work?

[Glenn]

So with us, we do $20,000 of tuition with a four year commitment.

[Aaron]

Interesting.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

And then the state of North Dakota right now has got, I believe it's $16,500 so that if you go into a program that's high demand, so like diesel welding, electrician, stuff like that, where the state will give this money to the kids, plus then with all the other scholarships that are out there and.

[Aaron]

Wow. So they could go. You'll put $20,000 towards a diesel program or whatever it is.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

And state will kick in as well.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

You'll help them with that. And then they just have to commit four years to then working at the company.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

And so then back to having a good culture. We want them to stay forever.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

You know, but now we got four years to show them who we are.

[Aaron]

Huh? Yeah, that's, that's quite good too.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

You guys are really doing some cool stuff.

[Glenn]

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that.

[Aaron]

Oh, it's super cool. It's, it's, it's, it's. That's what, that's really why I wanted to have you on. Like, because you're not, like, you're not an Ames. You know, you don't have thousands of people. You don't have like. I feel like people always dismiss this kind of stuff. Well, like, that's just big contractors can do that. Like, we can't do that. And it's like, not to say you guys aren't a small contractor, but again, you're not this like this coast to coast construction brand that's been around for, you know, since the 1800s. And it's just like, it's a cop out. I hear from other people, like, we can't do that because we're not, we're not big enough or we're, we're in a small town or whatever it is. Like, that's just, it doesn't work for our market.

[Glenn]

You can't not do it.

[Aaron]

I agree.

[Glenn]

You know, and how many times you go to college career fairs and come home empty handed? You know, you need to get to them when they're young.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And set the hook.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And then send them off to college and have them come back and it's not only, you know, you don't have to go to college. It's just one of the things that we will help with.

[Aaron]

No, I see. I see you guys events at events all the time. Social media has been great. So like I was telling you.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Whoever's running a marketing is doing a great job.

[Glenn]

No, she does an amazing job on it. And then because after listening to you, you know, I've been posting on LinkedIn.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And I see your stuff. Yes, yes, that's right too. Yeah. So I'm not just seeing from the company, I'm seeing your stuff, which is super helpful as well. But it seems like you guys are everywhere.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Like every time I go on LinkedIn, you guys are somewhere doing something. It's like, how many community events are there in Dickenson, North Dakota?

[Glenn]

Well, and, you know, big part of it we were talking about earlier, you got to sell yourself. You know, people are interviewing you before they ever come to the door, you know, so they want to see what you're all about and how you talk about, like LinkedIn. They want to see Glenn. What's Glenn about?

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

You know, they go to Facebook or Instagram. They want to see the company pictures. What are you guys doing out there? You know, so focusing, not always on your new shiny piece of equipment, but focusing on the guys.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And you don't, you don't have to talk all about Glenn. Like, oh, I'm great. You know, I'm. I'm like, none of your stuff is about you at all.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

I don't think I've seen a single thing about you. It's, it's all just what you're doing or this program or this piece of equipment or this event, so on and so forth, which is, I think. And it's, it's fun too. People, the social media thing, they're like, well, I don't, I don't want to self promote. Or it's a chore. This. And that's like, it shouldn't be. One, it shouldn't be self promotion. That's not the right way to do it. Two, it shouldn't be a chore. It should be fun. Like, it's just you giving other people credit.

[Glenn]

Hmm.

[Aaron]

That's all there is to it. It's really not that complicated. And it's fun for you to give other people credit. It's fun for other people to get the credit. There you go.

[Glenn]

Recognition.

[Aaron]

Yeah, it's just another form of recognition that's free. It doesn't cost Anything to post on LinkedIn. And there's so few people doing it that it goes really far when you do, which I think is great as well. Yeah, yeah.

[Glenn]

No, and that's back to, you know, your credit. Listening to you and all the other guys here, you know about the importance of posting. So you know, I've set a goal of posting once a week.

[Aaron]

Really? How long have you been doing that now?

[Glenn]

Probably about six months.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I've. And you've been very consistent. Like I said, I feel like I see your stuff all the time.

[Glenn]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Nice.

[Glenn]

Yep. And then you know, Susan, our marketing lady, you know, she's posting stuff all the time. You know, you're asking about stuff that we're doing, you know, like now we're doing a company newsletter.

[Aaron]

Nice.

[Glenn]

And one of the things that we're getting feedback from the guys is they want more information on what's going on.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know the why.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

So we, you know, got the company newsletter. Talk about jobs we have, we try to highlight, spotlight an employee, you know, just a bunch of good stuff to put out there. You know, we were talking earlier about things that we're doing. Getting the, the foreman and the superintendents telling the guys the why. Sure goes a long ways.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Well, and something like the newsletter I think goes along in social media too, but it goes a long way with families. Like if you're, especially if you're sending it to the home. Like I feel like the families, the spouses especially, they want to know what's going on. Like their spouses. You know, you're at work more than you're at home with your family. So what are you doing? And I think people are just curious and traditionally at a traditional company you have no idea what's going on within the company. Other projects you have no idea what's going on your project because you can't really take pictures or whatever it is. Like I just got a message yesterday, I saw from some guy, he signed up with this big company and first thing you do is sign a non disclosure agreement and it's just like kind of threatening you. If you take photos, you're going to be fired because it's confidential information on projects. And I understand some things are confidential. Most everything isn't though. And that's, but that's like the standard. Just don't talk about what you do. And then, but that it's hard to build pride with the workforce when you can't talk about what you do. And then their family has not a clue what the heck's going on, like with our videos. That's, that's the coolest, coolest thing I hear is I can share this with my family to show them what I do, which is awe. And sometimes these are old guys. Like, these are guys that have been in the industry for 30 years that have never been able to share with their families what it is that they do.

[Glenn]

Well, these people take a lot of pride in what they're doing. I mean, every one of us loves driving through a project that we built.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And looking at that and having the memories of, oh, I remember when this happened or that happened or whatever it was, you know, just. It's kind of a flashback. I mean, I love driving through those projects and I know the guys do as well, you know, but that way now they can. Can share it with the families.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah. The newsletter thing, I think is a home run. I think. And now that you say it, we should probably be better at that. Maybe we could do a newsletter now you're giving me some ideas. I mean, we publish a lot online, but maybe there's a better way to do it. All right. Well, I'm very excited. I'm excited for.

[Glenn]

I'm too. It's nothing but good. Like lots of, lots of good things coming.

[Aaron]

Yeah, no, I'm, I'm like, this is where you guys are after just a few years. So it's like another five to 10. This is going to be really neat.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Glenn]

Well, you know, I want to make it a good place for people to come to work. I want people when they are driving to work in the morning, they're happy. They're not like, ah, crap.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, the other thing, you know is I got a son that's now in the business and he's been around forever, but he's graduating high school. He's off to college in the fall, get things set up, you know, so it's on rails or has some good guardrails as he comes into the. To the business. So, you know, making it a lot easier having less people problems.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's just what takes the fun out of this whole thing. Like it. And that's what, that's what bums me out when I feel like people get into this. You kind of have to love this world to get into it and to be in it for a while because it's hard. It's really hard. Again, especially in a place up north, like when you're really battling the weather.

[Glenn]

And half the year you don't work.

[Aaron]

Yeah, it's it's, it's hard. It's a hard way life. It's, it's. So you've got to be all in on it. And it bums me out to see people bummed out with it because, you know, they, they're here because they enjoy it. They love the work, they love making a difference, but they're bummed out because of the people side of things, and they're just exhausted. But again, it doesn't have to be that way. There's a better way to do it. And again, you guys, I think, are a great example of, hey, in just a few years, like, it's, it's a few years of hard work, it's a few years of challenging a lot of things from the past, but it takes just a few years to dramatically change some things, like really plug some serious holes from a even just turnover standpoint.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Sweet.

[Glenn]

Nope, it's been, it's taken a lot of work, but worth every, every minute and, you know, continue to take work. It's not like it's like you're done. It's like, oh, hey, we're done now.

[Aaron]

No, it only takes, it takes more work, I would argue, going forward. But it's worthwhile work. Like, it's, it's, it's. You're happy to do the work because you're seeing the result in others, which I think is, is a lot of fun.

[Glenn]

Yeah. Well. And, you know, now we've taken the guys to the summit. We've had somebody to go to every one of your workshops.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, and they get to see that stuff. So now you're getting more buy in getting to see different, different views.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah, it's. And that stuff's good for other people, especially people that aren't in traditional leadership positions. Like, I think sending, sending executives to something like the summit or anything like that, it could be another event is great, and I think that's where companies go first. But I think it's even more powerful when you send people that haven't really thought about leadership yet to something like that.

[Glenn]

You promote somebody, but then you don't give them the tools.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

To do their, their new job.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And, you know, the other thing that, like, we've done and we're talking about culture is you come home and you tell your spouse, hey, I'm going to Texas here for work. It doesn't always go over so well because they think it's just a big party, you know.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

So we're like, you know, what we're gonna take spouses. So the guys, you know, go to the. To the workshops or the. The summit.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And then the wives come along and get to do whatever. So, you know, they get to go to Dallas or they get to go to San Antonio, and I tell you what, the few dollars of airfare that that cost goes miles.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[Glenn]

Yep. And now you're getting everybody to meet each other. The camaraderie, it's just. Yeah.

[Aaron]

Was it your spouse that hung out with the other spouses last night?

[Glenn]

Yeah. So then the very first one, unfortunately, I didn't get to go to. I was at a. Another event that I had planned.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

But then Jolene went with.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

And so then she planned a couple things that they could go during the day. So, like, they went to the Alamo. They went Segway, and I can't remember what else it was. Yeah, they. They went out and had fun, and it's super cool.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I saw you guys at the end of the event. Yeah. And you were telling me about that. I was like, that's great. Yeah.

[Glenn]

Then one night, you know, we go out for supper as a group and go to a nice steakhouse and.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

You know, have a good meal and go figure.

[Aaron]

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming down.

[Glenn]

Yes. Thanks for having me.

[Aaron]

Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing you all in, like, work season. Last time, it was not work season.

[Glenn]

No.

[Aaron]

Which is why I was there. But hopefully at some point, we can see all during work season.

[Glenn]

Well, maybe when you come in September, we could figure something out.

[Aaron]

September would be good, huh? Yeah. It'll still be full bore.

[Joe]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[Glenn]

Yeah. And usually after Labor Day, you are full bore, cuz.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Glenn]

Winter is not far away, so you're trying to. Trying to get projects done.

[Aaron]

Yeah, we'll do. We'll do something then. And I was gonna go to Coteau or Falkirk as well. See the. See the boys up there? I can't stay away from those. They're just. They're just too good. Well, thank you very much.

[Glenn]

Yeah, thank.

[Aaron]

You.