Saving Forests with Mass Timber | Russ Vaagen CEO of Vaagen Timbers | #3

What if the key to revolutionizing the construction industry lies hidden within sustainable forest management practices? Join us for this insightful conversation with Russ Vaagen, a five-generation family member of the forest industry and 2020 AWB Entrepreneur of the Year, as we explore the incredible potential of Mass Timber and sustainable building methods.

In this enlightening episode, we discuss the fascinating history of Russ's family in the wood products industry and how they have adapted to the ever-changing landscape of the timber industry. We also delve into the world of Mass Timber production world of Vaagen Timbers, forest management, examining the technology, design, and building processes that can positively impact forest health, reduce wildfire risk, and decrease smoke in our air. Plus, we'll uncover how Mass Timber construction can create economic opportunities, foster healthier ecosystems, and even help reduce carbon footprints.

Finally, we wrap up with a look at the quantification of the carbon benefits of using wood versus alternative methods, the increasing corporate demand for carbon footprint reduction, and how Mass Timber construction could help revolutionize the industry. Don't miss this captivating conversation with Russ Vaagen, as we discover the world of sustainable building and its potential to shape the future of construction for the better.

Looking for your mass timber community? Attend the 2025 Mass Timber Group Summit in Denver Co - Aug 20-22nd!

Chapters

• 0:00 Sustainable Building With Mass Timber
• 3:48 Lumber Business Adaptation
• 17:02 Forest and Timber Collaboration
• 25:30 Mass Timber Building and Forest Management
• 34:44 Benefits of Mass Timber Construction
• 41:23 Mass Timber Benefits and Carbon Reduction
• 49:31 CLT and Mass Timber Construction
• 58:33 Building a Sustainable Future
• 1:09:45 Magic Genie and Industry Inspiration
• 1:14:07 Building Sustainable Communities With Mass Timber

Transcript

Russ: 0:00

I think that, for me, my why is I want the forest to be healthy, i want to reduce wildfire risk, i want to reduce the smoke in our air And I want to convert that into these state of the art buildings, and we have technology now that allows us to do things. That is really quite amazing, but it also allows us to have these conversations, and when you have mass timber buildings and people look at them, there's an emotional feeling people get when they go in there and see it A living product, right, and people have an association with that Almost always positive, by the way, people just gravitate towards wood And it allows us to have the conversations like we just did about what's happening in the forest, so I think that's a really positive thing.

Nic: 0:53

Welcome to the Mass Timber Group Show.

Brady: 0:55

I'm Nick And I'm Brady, and we talk about the Sustainable Building Revolution. Our guest today has a family history of five generations of working with forests and personally brings with him over 20 years of experience working directly on issues related to responsible forest management and the wood products industry. He's also a true believer that both business and the environment can win at the same time, and he's invested in that belief by serving as the past president of the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition works with the Sustainable Northwest Organization, after serving three terms as a board member and then founding and serving as a CEO of the state of the art mass timber manufacturing facility, vagan Timbers. As a result of his hard work and dedication that he's put in, he was recognized as the 2020 AWB entrepreneur of the year. Mr Russ Vagan, thank you for being here.

Russ: 1:43

Thanks for having me, guys.

Nic: 1:45

No worries, we're excited to have you here, just because you've been in the industry and in the game a lot longer than most people. I mean, we talked about some of your roots in the forest industry, but can you talk a little bit more about how it's turned you into who you are? You know you were literally born into the family. Maybe start us off there a little bit.

Russ: 2:08

Yeah, you know, actually it goes far beyond my time on this planet. I was my great grandfather was a homesteader in Northeast Washington. He'd come from, i believe. He was born in Helena and worked with a lot of the homesteaders and at some point learned how to build sawmills and help cut things for houses and barns and fences and that kind of thing as people were settling out in the Northeast Washington and parts of North Idaho And at some point that just scratching out a living turned into a business And that his son-in-law became who was my grandfather Started Boggin Brothers Lumber in 1952. And so it's actually interesting that it goes back to my grandmother's side of the family. But Boggin is Norwegian and my great grandfather was Voldemur Anderson and he was Swedish, so we have a very Scandinavian set of roots on that side of the family And so you know, if you know anything about that part of the world, it's very forested and lots of history, of natural resources. So when they moved to the US they brought that with them And so when Boggin Brothers Lumber started they had humble beginnings, you know, cutting railroad ties and cutting mining timbers and things that were going on in the 50s and 60s.

Russ: 3:48

And then, as the Wests grew and the markets were growing, and California was a big market at that time. It was growing really rapidly. So they started getting into commodity lumber production And then in the 70s they invested in what was a small log mill. It's nothing like what a small log mill is today, but it's definitely focused And there has been in our family a focus on utilizing the resource, and you do that by being able to cut the smallest logs that are out there and utilizing as much as possible rather than, you know, running it over, burning it, what have you. And this was before like environmentalism was mainstream, it was just good ethical stewardship of the landscape.

Russ: 4:37

And in the late 70s my dad took over, not too long after my grandfather died, and then his brother the original Boggin Brothers passed away not long after that. So he had these next generation that got thrust into managing sawmill and forest management. And so my dad, duane, took over the family business and had to. And that's a challenge. If any of you have been involved with family business, you've got other members of the family that have different interests and values And you have to manage all that. It's not just like a shareholder that you can just go, you know, buy out or come to some agreement on. So that was tough. But for a long time the market was good.

Russ: 5:28

In the early 80s A lot of lumber manufacturers grew and there was lots of investment and it was a major industry, in particular out west. And then environmentalism became mainstream. I think that most of the forest industry kind of ignored those things for a long period of time And that finally kind of came home to roost and a lot of people remember it either as the timber wars or the spotted owl part of our history And that focused mainly on federal forest lands. There were some other lands that were kind of caught up in that whole thing, but the US Forest Service essentially seeing all of the social pressures and everything else that was going on with environmentalism, and then, you know, changing workforce, they had a hard time just adjusting. So what they did is they essentially just shut down Right And so What years was this?

Russ: 6:35

This was like. So I think 1988 was the high point of the federal timber supply. I think it was like 12.6 billion board feet a year And then by I think it was 1993, it was 1.8 billion. So it was like less than 10 percent of what it was, or right there about. So, and keep in mind that 10 percent wasn't 10 percent like here and there, i mean it was like throughout. So everything reduced by 90 percent or 10 times.

Russ: 7:17

So you have full sawmills that went out of business, and our family wasn't immune to that. We lost two out of the three sawmills that we owned at the time. We had a sawmill in each of the Northeast three counties, two of which were primarily fed by federal timber supply. So we went from a very fast growing family business with 495 employees at the height to slowly having to come to grips with the fact we didn't have timber for these mills, and so one mill, an I own, washington, got shut down first, and then, it was about eight or nine years later, republic Washington shut down. Both of those were the largest employer in those communities. So we went at that time from 495 employees down to just over 100 employees at Calville, and there was enough private forest land around to keep Calville still going, and so I have a tremendous amount of respect for my father to navigate that, navigate the, the family business and just some history there that trying to navigate that. We created an employee stock ownership trust. A lot of people know him as an ESOP employee stock ownership plan But that allowed some of the ownership to slide over to employees And then the company was able to borrow against that equity and then pay off family members So the thing could keep going. Because it's some, some things happen in family farms and family businesses where family members just want to extract money from the business. Well, when everything's going well you can do that. But when things retract like they did and not everybody wants to put money in to keep it going, and so that's where things get a little tricky. But anyway that, even though all that was tough, my family navigated through that. My dad also in the late 80s, early 90s, invested in the first single pass you saw in North America. So that's a.

Russ: 9:30

That's a Finnish sawmill design. Where it's. It kind of changes the whole way that we look at sawmilling Traditionally you take a log and you start whittling away from the outside and you turn it and you just keep getting more and more slices of wood off of it. Then it goes downstream and at the edge it and there's a thing called a gang saw that'll cut like big white pieces into two by fours or two by sixes, and so it was all predicated on these really big logs. Well, the logs got smaller and smaller as the forest composition changed, and so my dad saw this in the mid 80s I think he went to Finland for the first time, was told there was small diameter processing there. Wanted to see it. At that time it was a thought we would put that as an addition on our other mills, like it would be the small log side, if you will.

Nic: 10:23

What size is defined as small?

Russ: 10:25

diameter? That's a good question and there's varying answers. But as far as a huge saw is concerned, primarily goes down to about a four and a half inch top and that'll allow you to cut two, two by fours. Okay, so you know, and the white part isn't actually four, it has to finish at three and a half. So there's a little bit of sweet spot there where you can get two, two by fours. You could cut a smaller single two by four. But you can imagine that many little pieces and having your productivity be two instead of one it's the best way to go. So that's kind of the minimum threshold.

Russ: 11:01

Now, if you were doing just like a recovery and you wanted to go down to like four inches flat, you could probably do that. But you know, when you get to the tops of trees you get a lot of twist and you get a lot of movement in the shape of the tree. So four and a half is the smallest. But the other thing is the largest size that that mill will take is about the size of the steering wheel on a car. It's about 12 inches. So you're talking about absolutely small logs And instead of whittling away on the outside, it's really focusing on log centering, so that center of the log, and then cutting the pieces out away from the center, maximizing the amount of wood that you're cutting each time and then repeating that and then waiting until you get to another size, until you go to another board. So you know, you get to like a six inch log, for instance. Now you could cut a two by six and a two by four on top and bottom, three boards instead of two, and then you've got another two by six. So it's cut a stack.

Russ: 12:02

And the way that they do that which is really fascinating is they have two spindles with circular saws on there, primarily log breakdowns. In the past they've all been big band saws, so they there's been on a big set of wheels and you run the log through there and it slices off the piece. But this was circular saws and their teeth were just, you know, barely overlapping. So it allowed you to rip that piece in two So that one, two saws were making one long cut. That makes any sense. So, and what that allows you to do is you have more power and two spindles so you can operate that at a high speed, push logs through there and move quite quickly.

Russ: 12:42

So you go from high recovery on the on the log, big log cutting perfectly where the grain is and all that You maximize the recovery of board footage per log to maximizing the efficiency and having recoveries a second tier, so you kind of flop it. So the big logs you want to cut as many as possible but you have to maintain your recovery. The HUSAWs allow you to maintain your throughput and your efficiency And then you try to keep your recoveries high as possible, making sure the right logs are on the right sore. But you're talking about, you know, thousands and thousands of logs per shift. You're running upwards of a thousand linear feet per minute. It's a totally different game. So I was and I kind of equate that small log vision that my dad and the team there had in the 80s and 90s and focusing on that, and after they added that first one, they just basically went all small logs, bought another machine and that became the core part of the mill, took out the older traditional saw milling stuff.

Brady: 13:55

What does that do for the forest management Russ? How is that different from what they were doing using the old technology?

Russ: 13:59

Well, i think that when in 1988, when you had the high point of the forest service volume out there, the log size minimum was like six inches on certain species and then eight inches on others, now all of a sudden you're cutting down to a four and a half inch top. You can now open stands that had been overgrown post wildfire, that had in the past essentially no value. I mean, the forest service even did what they called bulldozer thinnings and lodgepole stands that had at the time perceived no value. But they recognized there was a wildfire risk. So they would just go run like a D10 bulldozer out there and just push swaths of trees down to try to break up the forest canopy. Now all of a sudden those trees have value and so now you can go in and thin those trees. And the other part about, if you saw, if you put more debarkers on it, you can cut wood that went through a wildfire. So wildfire actually charge the wood and then most of the wood is still sound but the tree dies And so over time this cracking at the tree starts the top and kind of splits its way down. So if you get it right away, you just lop the top off and that's you know. Like you would do a typical logging, you haul a black charred piece of wood in there. As long as it didn't burn into the wood some way or how it's able to take the ring debarker, get all that char off. And the reason you get the char off is because that black char gets into the wood chips.

Russ: 15:43

The wood chips is the hidden value in a sawmill, because you need that to pay for the rest of it, because you have this round piece and you're making rectangles. There's a whole lot around the outside. Well, those wood chips are a big part of it. That goes into pulp which then goes into packaging and paper products and those kinds of things. So if you have a piece of char in there in the wood chips as it goes through the pulping process, that will leave big black streaks in the paper and make it very weak. So there are certain things plastics and others that you really have to get out of the system. But being able to harvest trees after they've been burned is especially valuable to the landowner because now you can recover some of the costs that you have. You can now replant the forest. You can do other things out there on the landscape. It also that small diameter allows you to go into stands that were otherwise not viable and start thinning forests, and we've got an approach now.

Russ: 16:49

As part of that time You mentioned the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition, our collaborative efforts there. We really learned a lot about what the environmental community wanted to see out of forests And you heard a lot of people say don't cut a tree. That's really not an interest, that's a position based on some fear. Once you find the information, you realize we have to cut trees to save the forest. And so why?

Russ: 17:14

in the past people always had this preconceived notion that, well, the timber industry only wants to go after the big trees, cut the old growth, do all this stuff. Well, that changed a lot. I mean, our change was one thing, but it was kind of across the board and the industry that technology improved, allowing more and more recovery out of smaller logs, because that was what was available And what was gonna be coming available in future generations. And saw milling and forest management is a multi-generational, multi-decade planning process because trees grow slowly. So being able to go out there and say we're not interested in the big trees, quite honestly. We can't even cut them because we have a small log.

Russ: 18:04

So that was an area to start common ground with a lot of these environmentalists, and they really didn't like the wildfires. They didn't like seeing forests overgrown with wood falling over and the forest just kind of falling apart. It's pretty obvious when you see it's not healthy. There's no light getting to the forest floor. Well, now we can go out there and leave the biggest and best trees behind. We can do management with this idea of creating the historic range of variability of what would have been there naturally What tree species, what size, what spacing, all of those factors. So now you give the forest back to the way it was right Before a man was here and intervening, in that you now have a forest that can naturally withstand wildfire. A lot of these tree species have evolved over time to have thick bark and have a tree canopy that's way up in the air. So when a fire burns, the understory it doesn't kill the tree very rarely actually kills the tree.

Nic: 19:09

I got two quick questions How long do you have to harvest a forest fire that's came in before you're not able to turn that into something and sell that like a two by four? And then, how long does a tree? what's the natural life that it takes until you, i guess you can say it can harvest it. So, like you plant one seed and then all of a sudden, for your species, your territory, what's that lifecycle until you can make it, i guess, a viable product?

Russ: 19:41

Well, I'll touch the first one first. We use a rule of thumb. Each thing, each area is different depending on how much moisture there is. What have you? And this is for the fire, post-fire salvage, And it also is the same for mountain pine beetle, by the way.

Russ: 19:58

So, yeah, it's a very similar trauma for the tree. The tree dies, starts splitting from the top down. We say it happens in thirds. So the first year, if you get it let's say it burns in August and you harvest it that winter you're essentially gonna recover everything in that tree that would have been there other than maybe the chip wood and the top. So you're gonna recover 85% plus of what you would have cut it if it were green. Each year after that a third of the tree will start splitting and degrading. So if you wait, let's say with the Forest Service, they have to do these big NEPA analysis, environmental impact statements, all these things in order to sell something. So if they waited two years you would only have a third of that tree left, though the bottom third of that tree would be viable. So that is typically where it doesn't make financial sense to do so. Now there are some other markets for, like if you peel those logs and their season checks. I've been working really good for log bones, but that's a pretty limited market. You can't go too far on that.

Russ: 21:08

Your other question about how long does it take to grow, that's a great question. I would say the way we manage the forests here we don't typically replant, we let the natural seed stock replenish itself on the landscape. It's the best seed stock for the landscape. It's been from there, it is predisposed to survive in that landscape, versus bringing in seedlings from stock that may or may not have been from that particular elevation, slope aspect, all of those things. But even then it probably takes 50 to 60 years to get to like a mature tree.

Russ: 21:53

But because we're doing small diameter, we do things a little bit different. We do about every 15 year entries where we harvest some small trees that are like overstocked in certain areas. Some of the middle-aged trees that would be some small logs, some would be going to the whole log chipper and then some of the more mature trees where we'd probably take a little bit of a larger log and send it to another mill that cuts bigger boards or maybe goes to a plywood plant because they need a bigger log for a peeling veneer, and then you take the rest of it all up. So we don't really look at it. Let's say like they do in the South right, the South.

Russ: 22:36

they really manage their seed stock. They grow trees over about a 25 year to 30 year rotation. They get up to a harvest age. They do a pre-commercial thin to make sure that the trees are growing appropriately, and then they come back in there and they take small clear cuts. They clear that, they replan it and then they cycle those around So they maintain forest cover over the landscape, but it's always kind of moving, so it's like gaps and some of them are managing rather small clear cuts so they actually look like meadows or openings rather than big clear cuts.

Nic: 23:12

And that's Southern Yellow Pine right.

Russ: 23:14

Yeah, and that same kind of management happens on the West Coast of Washington and Oregon and British Columbia. But when you get the Intermountain West, where we are, we have so many different species. Each elevation and soil type changes the composition of the trees. So we kind of manage in that sequence where we're managing for the tree species that should be there. There are times where you have, let's say, a mountain pine beetle epidemic or wildfire where you have to take more than you would otherwise. But we leave quite a bit on the landscape, some for wildlife, so like wildlife snags that woodpeckers and birds and squirrels and other things would be able to do their dens and nests.

Russ: 24:03

We just talk about it differently, i think, than most because we're managing for multiple uses, we're managing for recreation, we're managing for aquatics and water and all of these things, and the proof is in the pudding that it works. People like it. I mean I hear environmentalists when we do field tours asking why we stopped at that boundary, because that forest over there needs it. A lot of that is just predicated on the forest service creating an artificial boundary, sometimes because of scientific ideas about trying to keep denning habitat. Other times it's just because that's where they picked the line to be. So I think that the forest I think it makes sense to think of it in terms of what's best for the forest and our Product that we're trying to achieve is healthy forest.

Brady: 24:55

The byproduct of that is what goes to the mill and then ultimately comes to our facility to make CLT and glulam beams and mass timber buildings so you talked a lot about Ideas and concepts that kind of merged from kind of being on opposite sides of the fence, like you talked about The timber wars in the spotted owl before, to now it kind of seems like there's a lot more collaboration and you've talked a lot about it And you continue to advocate for that type of conversation, changing gears a little bit and taking a step forward Into kind of the building atmosphere. So we've talked a lot about forest management. How are you and your team at Bog and timbers continuing that conversation and that philosophy into turning Those small diameter trees into what everybody knows now as mass timber?

Russ: 25:43

Yeah, that's, that's great. I think that well for me, my why is I want, i want the forest to be healthy, i want to reduce wildfire risk, i want to reduce the smoke in our air and I want to convert that into these state-of-the-art buildings. And We have technology a lot now that allows us to do things. That is really quite amazing. But it also allows us to have these conversations, and When you have mass timber buildings and people look at them, there's a Emotional feeling people get when they go in there and see it. It's a, it's a living product, right, and people have an association with that, almost always positive, by the way. I mean, people just gravitate towards wood and And it allows us to have the conversations, like we just did, about what's happening in the forest. So I think that's a really positive thing. But going forward in terms of, like the technology and the building and where we headed with This and then the other parts about it is there's a lot of drivers out there in our economy right now, like you know carbon and your Greenhouse gas emissions and your overall global footprint and all these things that mass timber is a great solution for because we're especially when you take it from what would otherwise burn in a wildfire, because that's kind of the highest and best, like perfect use. Because these forests, unfortunately, have turned into a carbon source rather than the carbon sink that they should be, because They burn in a wildfire and then we have to deal with all the negative consequences of that.

Russ: 27:23

But the buildings that come out of it are Incredible. The lumber that we get out of those forests to make the glulam and clt, it grows slow because they didn't have the nutrients it need to grow at its optimal level. So it made the, the lumber more dense and the knots Are our live knots and what that means is they didn't grow fast enough to keep the bark in there. So the knot stay in the wood and it gives a visual feature Rather than you know it falling out and creating a void in the product. And so you know we're we're now building small, medium and large buildings. Some of these are University buildings, some are industrial buildings, some are single family Custom homes and we do some rather small ad use and some modular type stuff too.

Russ: 28:19

So there's a variety of things that we can produce, and then that the nice thing about it is, you know, we've got this kind of simultaneous technology of mass timber and using CNC to create precision parts like big wooden Legos. At At the same time, we have this three-dimensional software, like Revit, for example, that allows architects and designers to go in and build these structures and not only how do we put the wood together, but what about the clash detection between the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, data, all the things that have to go into making a structure effective and work that all goes together now, and so mass timber being different, you know, because we'd have solid floors and solid walls as opposed to maybe Framing, where we can put things in the wall, and, and we've developed some trades and some Practices they're a little different now that you've got mass timber. So having a 3d model and being able to come up with a solution and execute on that is really something I think. The other thing that's really great about what we do is it allows us to go into that model and Then build a set of sequences and how to build that building, and we've built proprietary Software delivery and an animated system that allows us to show each piece and Put them in order and how they need to be constructed, which then goes back to us And now we have to deliver that in a constructible way.

Russ: 29:52

So the first piece on the load that shows up on the job site has to be the first piece that goes in the ground for that job to be successful. And You know, we did a project recently where we sent out six loads and six days to a Healthcare building that they were putting up in Newport, washington, and each day They place that truck. So in six days we did six loads. That's a three-story building and They were finishing it, you know, right there after the truck had dropped the part off. So once the truck left and the new truck came back in there, they're just, you know, tidying things up and getting prepared for the next set of loads that come in.

Russ: 30:38

So That's a totally different way of building, rather than having a bunch of two by four show up on the job site And you know having to do a takeoff, it's okay, well, we're gonna need this many board feet to frame this out. And then you get your Framing crew and they, they pack it in there and they put it in place. We're talking about a Pre-designed set of plans and parts that go in Sequentially. So even if a crew hasn't done it before and they start doing it, they get to be, you know, almost experts immediately because it's It is it's like LEGO. So you get, you follow the plan and it goes together. But we also have built a great team of people that have expertise and how to deliver that Help over those hurdles. So the other thing is the. The buildings are beautiful.

Russ: 31:31

The the thing about mass timber is that you get a finished surface. That's also your structure. So many people look at it and they try to just compare it to framing and I'm like it's not the same. If you're able to have a finished ceiling Once you put that down and that is your and that becomes your accent or your feature in your room, that's a tremendous value, because a lot of times, if you're comparing that to like a steel deck and a concrete pour over the top of that, you have to drop everything down. You either have to do a drop ceiling or you have to put everything up there and paint it black. You're trying to hide that stuff because it's not very sightly.

Russ: 32:13

With mass timber, you highlight and you like you want people's eyes to go up and look at that. So you're actually doing multiple Things in one pass. Now You might have to go in there and and touch it up and stain it because it is a construction site, but it's. It's nothing like having to put in like a Like the material behind me here, that's a. It's an accent wall that you pay in addition to what you did to frame up the structure.

Russ: 32:39

And When you start looking at it in that sense and you start building your design around wood and mass timber and and the things that it brings the table, you've got a really interesting value proposition of a faster building, higher performing building, because it has thermal mass that doesn't allow heat to transfer between the walls and the floors. It's, it's a pretty incredible thing and it's got a you know, a great visual. So I always tell people, you know, if it were, you know if we were selling cars. It's the difference between, you know, an economy car and a luxury brand, like we're a luxury brand. The old way of doing things is more functionality and like dealing with the negative consequences or or low performance of that structure. This, the speed, is one of the most impressive things to me.

Nic: 33:30

I know one of your projects and if you want to try pulling it up, brady, on the Vagantimberscom homepage, the McMillan lake house, yep, maybe if you speak for a second for that, because last time I was talking to you you mentioned Well, you can even read it, you. You guys put that thing up in the, was it before winter or the dead of winter, and so it's a 3000 square foot single family custom home And you close the envelope in five days.

Russ: 34:00

That's right in the middle of January. Yeah, so, and if people haven't lived?

Nic: 34:06

I mean I was, you know, born and raised in Montana, so, as Brady and you know, anywhere in the Pacific Northwest or up north winter Bytes, i mean you can get negative 30, negative 40 and, and so the faster you can close the envelope, the the much better it is, for you know all sorts of different reasons, you know. and so Who frames in January and in?

Russ: 34:29

Nobody, because you can't, because it's unpredictable. But if you've got a five-day window, even if it's snowing, i mean this is not like It's not impossible to do And you can work around the weather, but you know you get it closed in. We we used Vapor shield and some taping of the seams. So essentially, even though we didn't have the windows and the doors and everything, it was weather type, right, and that started on a Monday and you saw the picture of Ann McMillan sitting on her Second deck in her house. I was on Saturday. That was, you know, monday to Saturday. So it was, You know, and we're getting better and better all the time. That was a great time.

Russ: 35:16

We had a lot of things that we learned on there, but It's just, it's not that complicated that we can do things in the, the model that allows us to speed things up on the job site again. You just have a truck show up if there's a crane or in many cases We're using like off-road forklift, like a telehandler with a, and we just put a, a spreader bar, up there and we can place all these things that way and it's It really makes a job site nice. You know our manufacturing facility. Currently we're limited to four foot wide CLT panels and a lot of people see that as a limiting factor. But The building industry has been on a four foot grid for ever. Right, plywoods four feet, lumber units are four feet. Every job site has a forklift to live lift this stuff off the truck when it shows up. And so now, when we're doing some of these projects, especially residential projects, being able to have that same four foot grid, lift it off with the forklift or lift it up, like you know, with the crane, it gives a lot of flexibility, especially for contractors.

Russ: 36:33

Haven't dealt with it before, because if you were to build that same thing Let's say we did 10 foot wide panels You would need a crane. Now, yeah, you could place it faster, but your crew has to have a whole different skill set. Cranes are expensive, you know, they're not. You know crane operators don't grow on trees, they're not always available. So being able to have that flexibility and I was just talking to a custom home builder that we work with and he says, you know, he said the beauty of it is that if you really need to, you can get a few guys and you can you can manually move these things, but you can't do that with any bigger pieces. Well, that's what. After speaking to tom bond.

Nic: 37:14

I mean, obviously you know him well I. You have a lot of history together, great guy and one of your you know lead sales managers out there. But he built his single family custom home out of your clt, your glulam and everything and he was. I had the pleasure to go walk it. It's absolutely stunning. But he was ranting and raving like I mean, how many, how many people did he have on site that? I mean he gc'd the whole thing and he doesn't have you know the background for that. But it just it makes it easier to build out these projects.

Russ: 37:51

You're right. You know another case in point. We did a project in brookland, new york, a seven story. It's like a brownstone indigo, um, it's like a brownstone infill, right, and it was, uh, they call it timber house and, uh, it was an incredible job. The speed is one thing, but you know, they put up concrete structures very fast in new york But they have to pour a ton of people, a ton of resources at it and it's very fast-paced, very loud. Um, the contractor, their rise, development, they.

Russ: 38:22

When I went to visit they took me to another job site. He said rust, there's like 20 guys on this job site. They had to pull the forms down. We can use some of them twice, but we have this big pile of debris and garbage and They're banging and yelling and all this stuff going on. It's really disruptive and chaotic. He said this job, they have five guys on it. They, when the the truck crane shows up and pulls up on the curb, because that's the way they had to do it, and then we bring the truck in and they place it, then the truck crane goes away and then they're just adjusting things and it's really controlled and it's clean And it's sound. And you know the neighborhood. Um, you know, mainly when you deal with construction it's an annoyance if you live there. Yeah, the neighborhood there was like Fascinated, like people were sitting out on their steps just watching the whole thing go and they're like we can't believe How beautiful that is and how that's going together. That is just fascinating.

Nic: 39:20

So In the sides real quick. What size was that? Do you remember about it's?

Russ: 39:25

seven story building it's. I can't remember the, the square footage footprint, but it was a pretty large structure, i think it. Uh, i would guess it was probably 8,000 square foot footprint, something like that, maybe a little smaller than that.

Nic: 39:43

But it was. You went from 20 to five people like labor on an armsite.

Russ: 39:51

Yeah, yeah, something to that magnitude Right. And in this day and age where finding labor is difficult, that's a big savings opportunity.

Brady: 40:01

Right.

Russ: 40:03

And so there's some areas where we speed up and there's some areas where we just take a lot less resources to make it happen, and I think that there's a wide variety of value there that depending on the job site the needs of the client, the contractor, it can all. It really differentiates what reason they choose mass timber.

Brady: 40:36

What You talked a lot about learning as you've gone, like different aspects and benefits of mass timber that have kind of changed the way people are building. What have you seen in the industry over the course of Vogue and Timbers life that's kind of changed your thinking or kind of altered the way that you guys have taken course.

Russ: 40:56

Well, i think that I went into this knowing that we were very early on and this would adjust, even though that this has been done in Europe and there was some stuff that happened before we got involved. But I think that the projects are getting bigger. Contractors are becoming more comfortable with it. Owners and architects are really pushing hard to use more mass timber because they see that. I think the next stage that we're looking at is a real quantification of the carbon benefits of using wood versus alternative methods. I also think that the carbon footprint push from the Fortune 500 and the corporate world is going to have people look at buildings differently. I see a future where data centers they're a big focus on what type of energy they use, but they're not really building these things anymore efficiently or environmentally friendly. But if they use mass timber, they certainly could, and if they use mass timber, that would otherwise have come from wildfire. There's a carbon footprint calculation there. That's really beneficial. We can get that introduced into a carbon market so that companies like Microsoft, for instance, have made statements publicly that they're going to decarbonize themselves back to day zero, so they want a zero carbon footprint overall. So that means they're going to have to buy a lot of offsets because it's a big company, there's lots of people, there's lots of activity going around in the manufacturing and in the buildings they use and the transportation. They have a lot of work ahead of them, but if we can quantify mass timber and the carbon footprint of that mass timber and the reduction, now all these data centers, these buildings, what have you? they become advantageous from that goal of reducing your carbon footprint and your greenhouse gas emissions. Not only that, the building performs a lot better, so it's overall emissions for the life of the building are going to be a lot lower.

Russ: 43:11

And then the other one is Amazon and distribution centers. I mean that's a good example. I mean Amazon is building a ton of distribution centers all the time to put that product in your mailbox, and I think there's a big push with these in particular tech companies to look at better ways of building. And these big distribution centers. We have actually designed one in a 3D model and it can easily be done on a 50 foot grid, like they build them now, out of all or portion of it being mass timber.

Russ: 43:49

And most recently we were at Jannikie Industries and they're an aerospace contractor. They do all kinds of really interesting things and lots of clients, not only in aerospace but in the maritime industries. They do a lot of stuff with carbon fiber, glass fiber and that kind of stuff And they recently we built with them a very large production facility all out of mass timber. It's got 100 foot clear span timber trusses. We built a mass timber crane rail that the two 10 ton crane sit on and run for the distance of the building. So there's just a lot there And one of the things that they're building something in there that can't have light exposure and some other things in there so they can't have a lot of windows. So it's really important to the ownership group there to build a beautiful building that people could work inside and that they would enjoy. And so having mass timber gives you that warmth that gives you that beautiful environment to do work in.

Russ: 45:02

And we've seen other buildings in the past that were built out of heavy timber 100 plus years ago and they're awe inspiring. And now we see that happening with engineered mass timber, with CLT, wootlam et cetera. And so I think that that's the wave of the future and that's got to really pull this industry up in terms of overall volume or these large projects that I think are a little different And we're already seeing the growth in multifamily and in other commercial buildings and university campuses all for those same aesthetic reasons. But the price is very competitive And if it's designed right, we always encourage people that want to design with mass timber or want to build something with mass timber. Get involved with the manufacturer early, call us at the outset and let us help you optimize that design. Because if you just go out there and you're connecting with an architect and they're collecting information from various websites and they're doing, let's say, a pretty good job of laying these things out and they know what the spans look like, they don't always know the size of the grid and how that's going to affect the delivery and constructability.

Russ: 46:21

There might be places to value, engineer the overall volume of Woot down. There might be ways to look at it where you speed the construction cycle up and it reduces the overall cost and improves the value of your project. So if you treat mass timber as a material supply, like lumber or steel or concrete, you'll most likely spend more money because you're not really getting the benefit of it. But if you look at the 3D model and you work with the manufacturer to make sure that you're getting the right product produced. So you've got an efficient production of wood products and an efficient delivery system and then, finally, an efficient construction schedule.

Russ: 47:09

You can get a lot of benefit from mass timber and you can certainly beat the alternative cost of building pretty easily. And then I think we're talking about carbon credits and the value and the carbon that's stored in the wood. Once that gets recognized, i think that's going to be a game changer too, because if you had a project that was kind of on the edge one way or the other constructability and it's, let's say, it's within a couple percentage points on cost and maybe the traditional way would be less but you don't have a beautiful building well, now, all of a sudden, if there's a carbon market out there on that building and you could sell $800,000 worth of carbon credits back to the market or store that value for whatever purposes you have, all of a sudden that, let's say, it was a $200,000 difference in price. Now you've got a $600,000 benefit for using mass timber. So there's a lot of things on the horizon that I believe are going to drive mass timber acceleration beyond most people's expectations.

Nic: 48:19

I got a question. So let's say you are a developer and you're trying to wrestle with mass timber and I mean speak to I'm going to paint the picture a little bit, but try and speak to us like, or the person listening like you. Just, you don't even know what mass timber is. And so you're fortunate enough to have a wagon lumber with your family and so that's what produces a, let's say, 2x4, 8 foot or 2x4 or 2x6 and wider, and then a lot of that like you get that sourced and then you have wagon timbers which you're a mass timber producer, and that's in Calville, washington. And so how does a 2x4, 2x6, 2x8 maybe speak to me like I'm 10 years old? how does that get turned into CLT? and then what is CLT compared to? like a glulam, and why would I use a glulam versus a CLT? and then, from a developer standpoint, it's like do I have to go all in and use 100% as their different hybrid models that maybe I could like experiment with?

Russ: 49:24

Yeah, well, first of all, yes, there are hybrid models and you can use traditional materials with a mix of CLT. We've had mass timber construction in the past, like post and beam structures. You've ever been to a ski resort, you've probably have seen glulam beams and tongue and groove decking boards that are up in the ceiling. So you see this massive wood structure and that's just because it's able to withstand the heavy snow loads that are up there at ski resorts. But getting back to like what is CLT? Well, traditionally we take like a 2x6 and it needs to be dried a little differently than standard because we're going to be gluing it together and we don't want it to shrink too much. So we dry it down to a minimum of 15%. We're actually trying to get down around 10% to 12% moisture content to get more stability. So we then take lumber of varying lengths. Lumber comes in 2 foot increments, typically from 8 to 20 feet.

Russ: 50:26

We buy lumber of the kind of grade that we're looking for on the final product. So if it's an industrial grade, it might have a little wane, it might have more knots. There might be some things that aren't as great to look at. It's kind of like the leftover boards. You see, when you go to the home store There's some boards with some things that aren't sightly and somebody tosses them aside. So that would be like the lowest grade that we would go for. But beyond that we go up and grade from there. So there's architectural grade and we create what we call a premium grade, which is just a really rock solid piece of wood that is clean and clear.

Russ: 51:10

We then finger joint these shorter pieces together because we can make up to a 60 foot long piece, whether it's a glulam or CLT, and then. So now we can make that length. So let's say, if we're doing a 60 foot piece, we've got a 10 foot lumber. We glue six of these things together, we've got our 60 foot piece. It then cures and now it acts as one 60 foot long piece. Then that goes over to a molder. We take it from an inch and a half down to an inch and three eighths or 1.375 inches. The reason we do that is we want a nice clean surface for the glue to adhere to, kind of like if you were staining your deck, you would need to sand it so the stain can penetrate and actually go into the wood fibers. So we need that same thing to happen with the wood, but it also allows us to take that rounded ease edge, you see, on the lumber. It takes that and squares that off because we don't want to have little bumps along the top of our product.

Russ: 52:10

So then, from there, now we've got it molded down, it's square edge, it's the right size. We take the long pieces and we put them together and we lift them up on a belt four feet wide And then it runs back through a glue head where we have a melamine glue and a hardener that goes in. It starts interacting with one another. We slide that back on this set of conveyors and then it stops and then a vacuum lift brings up the cross-lemelus. So this is where CLT comes in. We take a perpendicular piece and we turn it the other way. So now you've got strength this way and strength this way. So it also keeps the stability much better than glue-lam wood because we have all the grains going the same way and each piece shrinks just a little bit. You have the same shrinkage overall. With CLT you have counteracting forces. So that's one of the things that CLT does. So you put the cross-lemelus on top, you run it back through that same glue head, you lift another set of four foot lumber, so it's four feet wide. So it would be nine pieces of two by six that we slide on top of that set of cross-lemelus Kind of makes a sandwich. We kind of tidy that up and push it together a little bit. We enter it into the press and then that's where the pressure comes in from the side and the top and bottom. We squeeze that down until it's really tight and we're getting that bond line. We're trying to get that heated up to a high-frequency system. So we use a high-frequency generator, we amplify it with power, it goes into the press which is completely clad in aluminum. It's clad in aluminum because that high-frequency wave goes in there, hits that aluminum and it dissipates. So no high-frequency waves are escaping the machine. But what it does is it finds that conductive layer of the glue and starts those micro-vibrations in there, heating that glue layer up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit And that's where you're getting that thermal modification and that really fast curing. So we're curing at about roughly a minute per layer.

Russ: 54:30

The unique thing about our press also is we press 20 feet at a time in length. So now all of a sudden that 60-foot piece, we can press that three times and we get all 60 feet pressed and we do that in pretty short order. Then it will go down and then we'd go get cut into with the CNC into the parts that it needs to be finished. I think that the really key factor there is all of that pressure and those high-frequency waves at the same time, the glues clear. So when you get that product out the other side and you cut it, it just looks like solid wood and it has a really beautiful aesthetic to it because all the grains are going the same way, and so now you have this big panel that can be cut into parts and put together.

Russ: 55:22

Glue lamb, on the other hand, is layers that are stacked in the same way together, with glue in between each one of them, and that can be used as a column, it can be used as a beam and we can even use it as a panel.

Russ: 55:36

And because it's on edge, many times we can use a thinner what we call GLT instead of using CLT, because it's a flatwise bending. It's just a little bit, a little bit less strength for the amount of fiber, because if you've ever handled a two by six, let's say a 20 footer, you go flat and it's very flexible and it will bend. If you go on edge it becomes more rigid And that's just because of the way the fibers interact. So we can do that any number of ways, but all of those pieces go into building these buildings. So a lot of times we use the post and beam construction, which is a glulam column with a glulam beam over the top. We tie that structure together and then we bring the CLT in and we start setting those panels on top, and then we can do the same thing and do that on multiple stories, and now with the codes we can go up to 18 stories with mass timber, which is a pretty, a big deal.

Nic: 56:44

That helped a lot. I know. I gotta say me and Brady are very excited and we can't thank you enough because Tom Vaughn and you you guys rolled out the red carpet for me and Brady's project in Missoula, montana, so we're looking forward to put up I guess you could call it our tiny home mass timber ADU or auxiliary dwelling units, and so that's coming around the corner and I'm excited to use your CLT project or your product. exciting times out there So. but that helped paint a really good picture. Appreciate that.

Brady: 57:16

Yeah, absolutely. And so, changing gears as we kind of come to the end of our time, we wanna talk a little bit about who Russ is. A lot of people listening might be young or new to the mass timber industry, and we wanna talk about some of your experiences that have helped grow you into the professional that you are and the successful company that Vaughn Timbers is. So we wanna ask a couple of questions along those lines is that okay, yeah, go for it, perfect. So what philosophy or outlook, kind of based on that experience, what would you share with people that are in that position?

Russ: 57:49

Well, we started out. We created some core values fairness, integrity and transparency. Those sound really good. They're not always easy to maintain And it's hard to get all the same people in an organization going the same direction. So I think it's important to have some sort of North Star like that to say hey, are we really being fair, are we really being transparent? Are we operating with integrity? And those are the things I've learned at my time when I was vice president of Vaughn Brothers before starting Vaughn Timbers There's no substitute for showing up and there's no substitute for hard work.

Russ: 58:33

I think that in this day and age, everybody wants quick results, but there's really no such thing. I mean, the whole idea of a 10 year overnight success is a good way to look at it. In life, people look like they just came out of nowhere when they get on whatever big stage that they hit. But that's never by accident. It's just like in sports ultimately, your record is what your record is Like. You could have a lot of almosts and not quites, but at the end of the day, the world's keeping score, and in business a lot of times we score that by having profit and loss. But I also think that anymore people are really looking at how you operate and what you do And they wanna know, by spending their money on things, that they're spending it in a responsible way and in a way that meets what they're doing. So we wanna align with people that value the very similar things that we do And then also just being very client centered and focused on trying to deliver value to the client. And again, sometimes people want things that aren't reasonable, but we try our very best to be very agreeable and to try to get to that common ground And most of the time we do and we've developed a really good following.

Russ: 1:00:10

We've got people now, because of that philosophy, i believe, that are repeat business And they know that we're a new business. And we had the good fortune of people kind of waiting in line to do business with us when we started, because they knew my history and they knew what we were trying to do and they wanted to be part of it, even knowing that the first generation of anything is usually gonna be improved quite quickly. But I think that enough people knew in their heart of hearts that this industry needed to move forward and that they wanted to be part of the beginning of making that change. I think that and I've just been incredibly grateful to have people see that and that resonate with others. And then I think the other thing from a success standpoint is just surrounding yourself with people that do the things that we need to do to be successful.

Russ: 1:01:08

You guys talked a lot about Tom Bond, spencer Bishop or sales director like Chris Zehrer, or Operations Guy. These people are extensions of who I am And then collectively it becomes what Vogue and Timbers is, and hopefully this is an organization that is bigger than just me. You go back to the Vogue and Brothers. The Brothers are long gone, but the company exists far beyond that, and that's because they planned and they built a company and a collection of views and the way of doing things that transcends their lifetime. And I think that that's what we're trying to do here. We're hopeful that we're just on the early stages of something that multi-generations can carry on into the future and see the trends and adjust accordingly, but just provide that opportunity for others to do some amazing things and try to pass along those values that got us to where we are today.

Nic: 1:02:17

So you've come a long way and you had an impressive exhibit at the International Mass Timber Conference. I gotta say I liked yours the best. It was Brady. It was incredible. It was this big two-story CLT type. I mean, how would you describe it, russ? your exhibit.

Russ: 1:02:36

It was like half of a custom mountain home.

Nic: 1:02:43

It was super cool And. But I guess the point of the story is this is now. You know I don't want to let the cat out of the bag by any means, but more on, like a two, three, four, five year scale I know you're not sitting on your hands. I mean, do you got any big plans that you can kind of share, like you know what would be next in your world if?

Russ: 1:03:02

Yeah, absolutely. I mean we're committed to growing our business. I mean we built this one, this plant, to kind of be the proof of concept, to learn, so we could scale and go where we think this market is going and where this industry is going and really build a strong foundation and a reputation. And so when we start to expand beyond what we're doing now, people are like want to do business with us and say, hey, are you able to take our project and make this work? That's kind of the approach that we want to create.

Russ: 1:03:41

And so with that we've got plans in the works for a brand new press line that will complement what we're doing here. That'll take our glulam and our four foot CLT and our GLT and we'll add primarily CLT that will allow us to go from eight feet wide up to 12 feet wide and likely go up to 60 feet in length. We're still kind of getting the finalized length characteristic on that. We do a little bit of 60 foot with our current plant but there might be some reasons and opportunity that we would go a little bit shorter than that from a handling and transportation standpoint. But and that then allows us to build really a fully integrated facility that allows us to build any mass timber building that can be conceived.

Nic: 1:04:40

Is that expanded in Calville?

Russ: 1:04:43

Yes, yeah, so we're going to do that here, but the plan is to make that scalable. So we're looking at other locations. We've done a lot of investigations in the, the Intermountain West, the Life States, the South. There are lots of opportunities for us to potentially grow, and so what we're doing here it's we want to be able to build something to where, when you walk in to a Vagen Timbers facility, wherever it is, it looks very much the same as something that you've seen in one of our other locations. And that is so we can build continuity of production. We can build the continuity of training and people know what they can count on from us, and then we can also know what the output will be. So we can help the schedule, because the schedule and building and construction is critical. So making the manufacturing align with what the clients need and want is going to be really important.

Nic: 1:05:45

Exciting, exciting. Well, to get into the some of the last questions, to wrap it up, we always like to ask that, hey, what's a favorite book of yours? Could be earlier in your years, could be now, maybe a book, a podcast, a show, documentary, something that kind of stands out and changed you.

Russ: 1:06:03

Well, i think that I've been enjoying Patrick Bett, david and value attainment a lot lately, i think love that show.

Russ: 1:06:12

The people that he's having on there are the real influencers across political lines, across industries, and then, to that end, i've read a lot of great books. I'm listening to one that I actually I'd heard about but never really got tied into. It's the Blue Ocean strategy that actually it was Patrick Bett, david, that had mentioned that that is probably the greatest marketing book out there, and so that is one that I've been just absorbing recently, and I also consume a great amount of red cardons content. I've read his books.

Russ: 1:06:57

His 10 X thinking is on the mark And I think I've done what he says, you know, in terms of taking big action. But I didn't really understand it until I really started listening to what he's doing and his approach And we've actually used him in sales training for our team and other things like that but just a whole mindset of taking big, massive action. I think a lot of people think too much and it keeps them from actually getting out there and creating action. And it reminds me of something that I heard long, long time ago I think it was actually Kenneth McFarland, who was like a motivational speaker in the 40s and 50s, and I was fortunate enough to run into a bunch of his old audio tapes back in the day when I was driving around.

Russ: 1:07:49

And you know, he just he says some things that are really it's amazing to hear somebody talk that long ago And it's still the same principles of what are successful today. And one of the things that he talked about that was so like while I was driving was that you know, if you were to think about a road trip across the country and you were to really sit down and think about all the dangerous things that could happen you know rock sliding off the hill as you're driving by, or bad weather and icy roads, other drivers, you know, potentially running into you or running a red light all these things that could happen you would never leave.

Nic: 1:08:38

Right.

Russ: 1:08:38

Because it would paralyze you. But once you get going you realize it's not like that. You know you're equipped to handle what's in front of you, even when and we've all been in like close calls and you know, seen, you know bad drivers do different things, but if you're, if you're out there enough, you realize you can probably handle just about anything. There's bad accidents, but that's. You know. That's the same thing like staying inside because you were afraid lightning is going to strike you. It's likely not going to happen and you can take measures to reduce those risks. It's the same with any action. If you let everything that you can think about keep you from doing it, you'll never get there. So it doesn't. You don't need to think anymore on it. You need to act on it, and I think that massive action is one of the key things that ties all successful organizations and people together. You've got to act, you've got to move ahead, and if you do that, you will figure out how to become successful.

Brady: 1:09:42

I couldn't agree more. One of our last two questions who inspires you in your industry?

Russ: 1:09:52

Boy. well, i mean, the cop out easy answer is my team here. but I'll just that's not necessarily fair. I would say that there's a couple of people that have influenced me in the industry. here I would I'd have to say my father. Like we don't always get along, but he's like there's a reason that he was the first ever timber processing man of the year. There's a reason that he's navigated a company through black swan events and come out the other side being more successful And it's just, like you know, massive perseverance.

Russ: 1:10:35

I would also say I've got a great friend that I've developed who's now the managing director of HUSAW in Finland, modico Rautio, and just learning from somebody from a different part of the world that you know how business works, what's common among all businesses, and you know I had the great fortune of having his son, paavo, come here last year for an internship or a practicum for his engineering degree.

Russ: 1:11:11

So he got to come to North America, spend a better part of three months learning how a North American CLT plant works and and then go back to Finland and apply that. Maybe someday he'll get his degree and want to come back here and help us figure out how to do things better, but those are the, those are the people that I interact with. I mean, there's a ton of people, great people, in this industry. you know Craig Rawlings and Arnie Didier. those guys are, you know, totally different realm of the world. You know, they, they, they approached this thing from a different place and have created a niche that nobody even thought existed before. So you know different ways of thinking And then they all share in that. just steadfast, you know, keep moving ahead, take action and make something happen.

Nic: 1:12:02

Cool. Well, before we get into our magic genie question, where can people find you out there and get in contact? Let's say I want to develop and stuff. I mean who? how do we get in contact with you?

Russ: 1:12:13

Well, i think first you go to our website, just look at what we've got there from a project's perspective. We've got a general info at VogandTimbrescom My email address is our Vogue, and at VogandTimbrescom and I can, you know, direct you to our sales team. We can get our phone number from the website as well. And then we're on all the social media platforms and I'm pretty active on there and we're constantly moving things around. But yeah, there's something you have a question on, reach out to us, either email or call, and we'd be happy to work you through it If it's a project or you just had a question about the way we do things.

Brady: 1:12:57

Great, all right. Last question I think it's a fun one, let's say, you found a Magic Genie, but it can only grant one wish specific to your industry. What would you wish for and why?

Russ: 1:13:10

Well, i'm going to make it happen without the Magic Genie, but I think if I could make it happen, it would be like a one. It would be getting the actual credit for what we're doing out in the forest, and that's a multifaceted thing, but what I mean by that is getting the credit from a carbon credit standpoint I mean, this should be definitely part of that whole discussion but also credit for doing the right thing and allowing us to move at scale on our federal forest lands to re-enter some of these places that have been missing infrastructure for decades and decades So they actually can afford to do the thinning that's out there. And I think that's even though you know we have a profitable business that we're trying to run and we would like to make money so we can reinvest and do new things. I still think that's a pretty altruistic outcome, because you're going to build economics in communities that otherwise wouldn't have it. You're going to be able to create a healthier forest, which is a healthier environment for everybody. You're going to create healthy, beautiful, big buildings that are offset by the carbon that they hold within themselves.

Russ: 1:14:29

So I think that that is probably the longest one answer that you can get from a genie in the bottle, but it's really just like recognizing the great work that is being done on the section of forest that we should be managing. I would just say, lastly, that I would also say that there's really good reason for us to have protected areas. There's good reason for us to have parks and wilderness. We don't need to manage every acre, but those acres at the front country that already have roads, that we're recreating and that we're near communities.

Russ: 1:15:03

Let's just manage those. If we just manage those, we can build a wonderful industry and we can have healthy forests, healthy water and healthy air.

Nic: 1:15:14

I love it. This is an educational lesson and that's what we're trying to do at Mass Timber Group is network advocate and just educate and build in Mass Timber. Thank you very much for having some time with us and we'll see you around. I'm sure, Russ, It's been a pleasure. Thanks, guys. All right, We'll see you around.