Hauler Hero collects $16M for its AI waste management software

Carrier herohas raised new funding as demand for its AI-powered waste management software continues to increase.

The New York-based startup has raised $16 million in a Series A round led by Frontier Growth with participation from K5 Global and Somersault Ventures, among others, TechCrunch has learned. Hauler Hero has raised more than $27 million in venture capital to date.

Hauler Hero has developed an all-in-one software platform for waste management companies that includes a variety of features including customer relationship management, billing and routing. And now Hauler Hero, like so many other software companies, plans to offer AI agents to its customers as well.

Hauler Hero was co-founded in 2020 by CEO Mark Hoadley and brother-in-law Ben Sikma, who encountered outdated software while working on mergers and acquisitions in the industry. Their goal was to bring waste management into the modern age.

“All existing software in the space was clunky and old,” Hoadley told TechCrunch in 2024. “Sometimes we talked about how this one reminds us of the Oregon Trail, this reminds us of the cell phone Michael Douglas used in ‘Wall Street.’ They are very clumsy and old-fashioned.”

The numbers suggest the company has had some success; Hauler Hero said it has helped facilitate 35 million waste collections since its inception in 2020. And it continues to grow, according to Hoadley, who told TechCrunch that the company has doubled its workforce, revenue and customer base since announcing its seed round in late 2024.

Hauler Hero has added new features to its platform since the seed round, Hoadley said. The most notable is a product that captures footage from third-party cameras on garbage trucks and sends it directly to a software command center. This information helps waste management companies confirm collections, verify billing and better monitor their distributed fleets, the company said.

Hoadley said some sanitation workers and their respective unions are not fond of this technology upgrade. But he added that most unions prevent the footage from being used against drivers for purposes such as disciplinary action, and that the footage could actually help reduce drivers’ liability in accidents or if they are accused of missing a pickup.

“Think of it as running a factory with no roof and no visibility into what’s going on in that factory,” Hoadley said. “If you don’t have visibility into what’s happening out there, it’s very difficult to have quality control. And the quality control in this case is what happened out there, was it picked up?”

A trio of AI agents

Hauler Hero is now working on developing and deploying a set of three AI agents. One of them, Hero Vision, focuses on automatically identifying service issues and revenue opportunities. Hero Chat is a chatbot for customer questions. Hero Route uses route data to automatically adjust routes and make them more efficient.

“There’s a huge amount of data in our system about pickups, work orders and billing information, and if you give these agents visibility into your data model, you can just tell them, hey, go make me a chart,” Hoadley said.

Hauler Hero plans to use some of its recent funding to commercialize these agents, in addition to expanding its offering to municipal entities, a growing group of the company’s customers.

“It wasn’t something that I necessarily thought would be part of this journey,” Hoadley said of working with these public entities. “It kind of came about organically, as a lot of things do. We just started getting income from a bunch of municipalities and we ended up selling one and then we sold another.”

Hoadley said he thinks some of that demand is driven by the fact that his two main competitors, Routeware and Wastechmerged in 2024, leaving government agencies with little choice of providers to work with.

Hoadley said the company is now focused on refining and scaling its product – and perhaps some new additions as well.

“We will continue to chart the course for the next decade to be at the forefront of delivering value to customers, using the latest tools,” said Hoadley. “There are many more fun and valuable things we can do for our customers, and we are very excited about that.”

This piece has been updated to better reflect which investors participated in the Series A.