Al Nahmad: That’s an interesting question. Who wants to deal with that?
Barry Logan: It’s Rick.
Rick Gomez: Yes, sure. Hi, Dave. Good morning. Yes. I mean I don’t think I’m overstating it by saying it’s been the Wild West out in the field the last couple of years, and all of that supply chain imbalance weighs on that same-store productivity equation. And so what you’ve seen in the last few quarters is variable SG&A reacting to a different end market. But more importantly, what we’ve been working on the last year or so is a lot of energy into understanding our own internal productivity. And we’ve armed our leaders with real-time data that should help drive this in the field. They know this is a priority and they are responding. But that – this productivity journey that we’re on is going to take some time.
It encompasses a huge number of things. It starts with how we order and receive product from 2,000 suppliers. And we talk about supply chains getting better, but they are not better everywhere just yet. Commercial is one example. And you asked where are the pain points still, that is still a pain point in the supply chain is commercial and high-efficiency product. But it starts with how we receive product from over 2,000 suppliers. It impacts the real estate footprint, how we fulfill orders in the warehouse and finally, how we deliver product to customers. That’s really the what this productivity effort encompasses, it’s a lot of things really from the very beginning to the very end of our processes. And so we’re starting to see progress, but there is a lot more to do.
And I think big picture, two thoughts, I’ll leave you with two thoughts. One is that I think our growing scale naturally enables more efficiency, right? As a $7 billion company, we have more opportunity to be more efficient than we did as a company half our size 4 years ago. And secondly, we possess the technology and the tools to drive this productivity throughout our network. And you’ll note in the press release that we talked about what some of those internal investments have been in the pricing technology that A.J. just talked about, the warehouse management and order fulfillment technology. Some interesting work going on around logistics in our network. And so over time, that will bear some fruit in productivity and that will – we’re starting to see the benefits of that today and not just variable SG&A reacting, but fixed SG&A reacting as well.
Dave Manthey: Thank you.
A.J. Nahmad: I’ll double click on the last one, the logistics and transportation delivery. That is the third biggest expense for the company. About $200 million we spend moving products in and through and around our network and delivering products to customers. And I call it our next frontier of opportunity for continuous improvement. I think there is about 800 trucks in the fleet today. But there are now with the data being exposed and smart people taking smart actions, we’re realizing that some of those trucks are sitting idle for 90% of the day. It doesn’t make sense to have that truck or maybe use a different means of transportation to get product from point A to point B? Or can our business unit share trucks? Or is there a more efficient route to deliver the product?
So all those questions now about the millions of times that we’re moving products around our network in and out and through to customers are open season on that effort, and it’s a big bucket. So we’re going to move a needle on a big bucket.
Dave Manthey: Okay. Thank you for that detail. And second, could you give us your take on Governor DeSantis rejecting IRA funds?
