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Electric Fleets: Why Progress Is So Slow · Industrial Advisors

• 0:00
  What are you seeing and, and, and reading and hearing about as it relates to
• 0:03
  electric fleets and industrial banks?
• 0:05
  Yeah, it's a whole lot of talk.
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  Yeah.
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  Not a lot of action.
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  Right.
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  Welcome to our Industrial Advisors podcast.
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  You have Bill Condo and Matt McGregor.
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  We have a five minute Friday today and, and talking really about trucking
• 0:31
  and, and transportation and how it relates to industrial buildings.
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  Yes, an electric I. Primarily,
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  yes.
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  Primarily the electric fleet.
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  And you study this stuff and look at it a lot.
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  So like what, what do you say?
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  I keep out on a little bit.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  What are you, what are you seeing and, and, and reading and hearing
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  about as it relates to electric fleets and industrial things.
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  Yeah.
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  It's a whole lot of talk.
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  Yeah.
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  Not a
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  lot of action.
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  Right, right.
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  So I talked to a lot of developers 'cause I've been waiting, you know,
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  there's like third podcast, we've talked about it in a couple years.
• 1:00
  Mm-hmm.
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  And if you listen to the one a couple years ago, we would've thought
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  by now you'd be seeing fleets.
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  We're not.
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  Right.
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  And so then you get into it and you go, well, what about the spec buildings?
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  What are they doing?
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Right?
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  What is our spec buildings doing?
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  Right?
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  They're putting conduit in, right?
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  But they're not running the power for a few reasons.
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  Number one, the power's not there.
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  Right?
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  We're having a power prop that That's right.
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  Yeah.
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  And if you take a 500,000 footer, like we're building the Sumner, and you run the
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  power and you say, Hey, we're gonna need.
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  A ton of employee parking for AV cars.
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  We're gonna need long haul truck drivers to recharge in the future.
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  'cause remember, when you build these buildings, you don't build them for 10
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  years, you're building for 50 or 60.
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  Correct.
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  Okay.
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  So if the current legislation is right, we would be requiring
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  a lot of these to convert over.
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  So you have to look at it.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Right.
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  So if you.
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  Need a truck fleet plus your delivery feed in fleet into the
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  local market to power that building would be about 16,000 extra amps.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Okay.
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  So the power companies are already tied in power.
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  They're not gonna just pipe it in there and go maybe, right?
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  You're gonna use it 10 years down the road.
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  So right now on the spec buildings, they're really putting conduit in.
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  And then I'll say one other thing on that that's interesting is right now, and
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  I've got my first electric car, right?
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  Yeah.
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  Right now on electric cars, there's really two hookups.
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  There's Tesla and everything else.
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  In trucking, there's nine or 10 mm different plugin.
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  So you can't just put a spec one in?
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  No, it doesn't work.
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  No, it doesn't work.
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  Yeah.
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  I didn't realize that, that there was nine or 10 different Yeah,
• 2:36
  no.
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  And the infrastructure's not built out for them.
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  So on deliveries, for example, those trucks, you have to go back to power up.
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  Right?
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  That doesn't work.
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  Yeah.
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  And they're saying that they're more expensive than gas vehicles, and that's
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  why Amazon and other people haven't.
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  Totally gone over there because these vehicles are way heavier.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  And so they're not only worse on roads, they're worse on
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  tires, they're worse on brakes.
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  Brakes are way worse for the environment than gas.
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  All the stuff that gets released from brakes and stuff.
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  Yeah.
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  So for all these reasons, these companies are not just rushing
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  out, changing the fleets over.
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  Right, right.
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  And we're seeing, so, you know, on the industrial side, when it
• 3:14
  got super tight, we were obviously seeing some retrofits of existing
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  buildings and we haven't really seen.
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  Shift on retrofit is no fitted buildings at all.
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  But to your point, we're only the car park.
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  It's the car.
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  Yeah.
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  But we're, but not on the trucks.
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  And we're starting to see it a little bit, as you mentioned, on
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  the new spec industrial buildings.
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  But, uh, you just did a good job at describing what that looks like.
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  Yeah.
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  The final thing I'll throw out there, and it's the sa, it's the same thing on boats.
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  Why people aren't buying, you know, the battery powered boats.
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  You can go buy a Peterbilt.
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  A semi for about a third of the price of that equal semi in electric,
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  but it's way cheaper to operate.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Yeah.
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  And it's not effective because you, of the charging stations, that's not built out.
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  So it's just not there.
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  So.
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  I guess to close it up, hey, they're building it with the conduit there.
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  Empty.
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  Yeah.
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  Going out to the truck courts, going to in front of the dock, high doors thing.
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  Building it for the infrastructure.
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  But the question, it's, it's really questionable what
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  that future's gonna hold.
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  Where if you would've asked me two years ago, I would've said yes, all
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  these buildings gonna be built out.
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  But man, it's complex issue.
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  Yeah.
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  And it seems like, you know, Prologis certainly spends.
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  A lot of time and resources and, and into being cutting
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  edge and looking at this stuff.
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  So if we really wanted to take a deep, deep dive into this and do a full episode,
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  yeah,
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  we could get somebody from Prologis on here and really dive into it.
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  That's right.
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  But talk about the pilot projects.
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  With Walmarts via Highway 10, between the ports of la Long Beach and Phoenix.
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  Yeah.
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  Walmart has been doing stuff down there since 2016, so they started with
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  autonomous trucks, but it would have a driver just sitting there just in case.
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  Yeah.
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  Plus a pilot car in front and back.
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  Through time, they've released less and less regulation on it.
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  'cause there hasn't been wrecks.
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  It's been productive.
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  Right?
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  Yeah.
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  But they're still not doing that just by autonomous trucks.
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  So nine years later.
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  They're still testing it, right?
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  But it's still not autonomous trucks delivering even simply from Port of
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  LA Long Beach into Phoenix, which is that route on Highway 10 that
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  is just crazy with trucks right.
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  Coming in and outta the port.
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  So they still have not progressed to the autonomous trucks.
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  So what do you think the future looks like on, from, on that topic?
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  I mean, look.
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  I would say it's a slower progression than getting rid of lumberjacks.
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  Right, right.
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  Getting rid of long haul truck drivers.
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  I mean, your dad was one, right?
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  Yeah.
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  It's going to be a longer progression because of the technology and
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  the infrastructure is not there.
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  Right.
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  I could see autonomous gas trucks way in adv because you're seeing
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  that Waymo, you know, taxi stuff.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  We're gonna see that long haul before you see the localized delivery ones.
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  That really impact the areas because the localized delivery ones, the batteries
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  and the vehicles don't make sense yet.
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  Right.
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  So you're gonna see the autonomous ones, but they've been testing it for a long
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  time, but it's such a slow progression.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, I remember when we were going through Michigan State, getting our
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  masters, like that was a big topic.
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  Totally.
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  It's autonomous trucking and it hasn't changed much.
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  No, it hasn't.
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  That's my point is it hasn't changed a lot since then.
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  That's right.
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  Slow, really fast, slow progression.
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  Yeah.
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  Really fascinating to keep an eye on, not only like what is spec build,
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  like development of spec buildings and what that looks like over the
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  next five years as it relates to autonomous trucking and electric
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  vehicles and, and, and trucks as well.
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  It'll be interesting sitting here 3, 5, 7, 10 years down the road
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  to see how that progression looks.
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  I totally agree.
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  Look forward to the next one, but it's a slow progression.
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  Yeah.
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  Happy Friday.
• 6:48
  Happy Friday.