Hauler Hero Secures $16M Series A To Modernize Waste Management Operations
Hauler Hero, a New York-based AI operating system for waste and recycling companies, closed a $16 million Series A led by Frontier Growth with participation from Disruptive Founders Fund, Somersault Ventures, and several waste industry and ServiceTitan executives.
The funding follows a year of expansion and will accelerate rollout of its AI tools, now in beta. The target: a $145 billion industry still held back by paper route sheets, legacy on-premise software, and manual workflows.
Why this matters for operators and GMs
Most haulers run on fragmented systems that slow billing, routing, and customer service. Hauler Hero consolidates the stack into one platform and automates the admin work that drags on margins.
The company reports office teams save 14+ hours per week, cash collection improves, churn drops, and fleets can grow without adding headcount. For managers, that's immediate operational leverage and cleaner visibility across routes, crews, and revenue.
What the platform centralizes
- Invoicing and payments: Reduce billing cycles and close out work faster.
- Routing and dispatch: Move from static route sheets to data-driven schedules.
- Customer engagement: Text, email, and portal support from a single console.
AI agents (in beta) built for field reality
- Hero Vision: Truck-mounted cameras use computer vision to flag missed services, contamination, and potential revenue events.
- Hero Chat: Automates resident communications over text, email, and chat to handle routine inquiries in real time.
- Hero Routing: Learns from millions of service stops to optimize routes, cut fuel, and manage same-day exceptions.
Taken together, these tools shift teams from reacting to issues to managing exceptions, tightening billing accuracy and route efficiency.
Traction and scale
Hauler Hero has doubled its customer base and now supports 200+ organizations, from independent haulers to municipalities. Notable users include West Oahu Aggregate, the City of Sunnyvale, the City of Redlands, and Greenleaf Recycling.
On-platform activity includes roughly 4.5 million pickups per month, $300 million in annualized GMV processed, and service to 750,000+ commercial and residential waste generators through its portal.
What to watch next
- Beta to production: Confirm timelines and support levels for AI agents moving into GA.
- Data integration: Map how the platform ingests service logs, GPS, ticketing, and billing systems to avoid double entry.
- Change management: Train dispatch and driver teams; set clear SLAs for issue detection and closeout.
- KPIs: Track billing cycle time, DSO, route hours per stop, missed pickup rate, fuel per route, and churn.
- Compliance and privacy: Align camera use and data retention with municipal rules and customer policies. For industry context, see the U.S. EPA's waste data overview here.
Customer and investor perspective
Alex Babbitt, Owner and Founder, Carolina Waste: "Hauler Hero has transformed how we operate. We've cut billing time in half and automated our routing, which means our team can focus on growth instead of paperwork. The platform scales with us, and we can manage everything from our phones and handle more customers without adding administrative staff. We're serving 25,000 customers now, and I have no doubt that when we get to 100,000 customers and beyond, Hauler Hero will be right there to keep up with that growth."
Dave Pandullo, Partner, Frontier Growth: "Hauler Hero's team is passionate about improving workflows in a massive, underserved vertical that is critical to the health and safety of every community across the country. They aren't just selling software, they are fundamentally changing the unit economics of waste collection."
Mark Hoadley, Co-Founder and CEO, Hauler Hero: "Waste collection is one of the most essential services in society, yet it's been run on outdated tools for decades. We're building the operating system that finally brings modern data, automation, and AI to the people who keep our villages, cities, and industries running every day."
Manager's next steps
- Run a 60-90 day pilot with a representative route mix; baseline KPIs upfront.
- Start with billing and routing automation, then layer in Vision and Chat once processes stabilize.
- Set a weekly exception review: missed services, route anomalies, and billing discrepancies.
- Build an ROI dashboard tied to labor hours saved, DSO reduction, fuel per stop, and customer retention.
If you're building an AI capability for operations leads and dispatch managers, you can explore practical training and templates at Complete AI Training.
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