Hauler Hero raises $16M Series A to modernize waste management with AI

For years, Silicon Valley poured money into software that optimized desks, dashboards, and digital workflows. One industry that never made the shortlist was waste management. The trucks kept rolling. The paper route sheets stayed. The billing errors piled up quietly.

That gap is now attracting serious capital.

Enter Hauler Hero, a New York-based startup emerging from a long-overlooked industry. Today, the company announced it has raised $16 million in Series A funding to bring modern software and AI-driven automation to waste and recycling operators, a sector that moves more than $145 billion each year yet still runs on aging systems. The round was led by Frontier Growth, with participation from Disruptive Founders Fund, Somersault Ventures, and several ServiceTitan operators and executives.

The timing reflects traction rather than theory. Over the past year, Hauler Hero has doubled its customer base and expanded to more than 200 waste management companies. The platform now supports roughly 4.5 million pickups each month, processes more than $300 million in annualized gross merchandise value, and serves over 750,000 residential and commercial customers.

Waste collection sits at the intersection of physical labor, logistics, and local government contracts. Software never adapted cleanly to that reality. Many operators still rely on legacy on-premises tools, spreadsheets, and manual checks for invoicing, dispatch, routing, and customer service. Small inefficiencies compound into lost revenue, billing delays, and strained margins.

“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,” said Alex Babbitt, owner and founder of Carolina Waste. “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.”

With $16M Funding, Hauler Hero Aims to Drag Waste Management Out of the Software Dark Ages

Hauler Hero positions its product as a single operating system for haulers. The software replaces fragmented tools with one interface that manages invoicing, routing, dispatch, and customer engagement. Office teams save an estimated 14 hours each week on administrative work, according to the company, leading to faster collections and fewer service disputes.

The company is now testing a new layer of AI agents built on top of that operational data. One uses on-truck cameras to flag missed services and billing gaps. Another automates routine customer messages across text, email, and chat. A third adjusts routes using data from millions of historical stops to reduce mileage and fuel use when exceptions arise during the day.

Together, these systems shift operators away from constant manual oversight. Missed pickups, margin leaks, and routing issues are automatically surfaced, allowing managers to act on exceptions rather than scanning spreadsheets.

Frontier Growth partner Dave Pandullo framed the investment around economics rather than novelty. “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,” he said. “They aren’t just selling software, they are fundamentally changing the unit economics of waste collection.”

That focus has attracted a mix of independent haulers, municipalities, and regional operators, including the City of Sunnyvale, the City of Redlands, West Oahu Aggregate, and Greenleaf Recycling. Many customers adopt the platform during growth phases, when manual processes begin to break under scale.

“Waste collection is one of the most essential services in society, yet it’s been run on outdated tools for decades,” said Mark Hoadley, co-founder and CEO of Hauler Hero. “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.”

The Series A funding will go toward expanding the company’s AI product suite and supporting a customer base that has already crossed into enterprise territory. For an industry long ignored by venture-backed software, the shift feels overdue.