Howler Hero has raised new funding as demand for its AI-powered waste management software continues to grow.
According to research from TechCrunch, the New York-based startup has raised $16 million in a Series A round led by Frontier Growth with participation from K5 Global, Somersault Ventures and others. 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 covers a variety of functions such as customer relationship management, billing, and routing. And now, like many other software companies, Hauler Hero also plans to offer AI agents to its customers.
Hauler Hero was co-founded in 2020 by CEO Mark Hoadley and his brother-in-law Ben Sikma. Ben Sikma encountered outdated software while working on mergers and acquisitions in this space. Their aim was to bring waste management into the modern era.
“All the existing software in that space was clunky and outdated,” Hoadley told TechCrunch in 2024. “We sometimes talked about how this reminded me of the Oregon Trail, this reminded me of the cell phone Michael Douglas used on ‘Wall Street.'” It’s so clunky and outdated. ”
The numbers suggest the company is having some success. Hauler Hero said it has helped facilitate 35 million trash pickups since its founding in 2020. Hoadley told TechCrunch that the company has doubled its headcount, revenue and customer base since announcing its seed round in late 2024. And it continues to grow.
Hoadley said Hauler Hero has added new features to the platform since the seed round. Most notable is a product that captures images from third-party cameras on garbage trucks and sends them directly to a software command center. The company says this information helps waste management companies confirm collections, verify claims and better monitor dispersed vehicles.
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Hoadley said some sanitation workers and their unions don’t like the innovation. But he added that most unions prohibit footage from being used against drivers for disciplinary purposes, for example, and that footage can actually help reduce a driver’s liability for an accident or failure to pick up someone.
“Think of it like running a factory without a roof, so you can’t see what’s going on inside the factory,” Hoadley said. “It’s very difficult to do quality control if you don’t know what’s going on outside. And quality control in this case is what was outside, was it picked up?”
Trio of AI agents
Hauler Hero is currently working on developing and deploying a set of three AI agents. One, Hero Vision, focuses on automatically identifying service issues and revenue opportunities. Hero Chat is a chatbot that responds to customer inquiries. Hero Route uses your route data to automatically adjust your routes to increase efficiency.
“We have a tremendous amount of data in our systems about pickups, work orders, and billing information. Once we get these agents to understand the data model, we can just say, ‘Create a graph for us,'” Hoadley says.
In addition to expanding its services to municipalities, a growing customer group for the company, Hauler Hero plans to use some of the recent funding to commercialize these agents.
“We didn’t necessarily think we would be part of this journey,” Hoadley said of working with these public entities. “Like many things, it just happened organically. There was an influx from several municipalities, and we ended up selling one of them, and then another one.”
Hoadley said he believes some of that demand is being driven by the 2024 merger of two major competitors, Rootware and Wastec, leaving agencies with few choices of providers to work with.
Hoadley said the company is currently focused on fine-tuning and expanding the product, and perhaps some new additions as well.
“We continue to chart a course for the next 10 years, leveraging all the latest tools to put us at the cutting edge of delivering value to our customers,” Hoadley said. “There are so many other fun and valuable things we can do for our customers, and we’re really excited about it.”
This article has been updated to better reflect investors who participated in the Series A.
