Why I'm Building Klau

My first summer job was in 1996. I was handed an acetylene torch and told to cut up scrapped bins in my family's solid waste yard in Paso Robles. I've been in this industry for thirty years now. I've welded. I've driven trucks. I've managed operations. And eventually, I started writing software.

In the late 2000s, as operations manager, I bought Routeware's on-board computers for our fleet. I understood the value. We got value out of it. But the system was clunky. The hardware failed. RMA cycles for one-off devices that nobody else used. It worked, but it was fragile.

What was plain as day to me: consumer-grade Android hardware was just as good, if not better, at a fraction of the price. The timing was lucky, Android was stabilizing and the devices were getting reliable.

In 2010, I made a decision. I could stay where I was, a cog in a wheel, funneling profits to a business I'd never truly own, or I could branch out and create my own future. I resigned. I returned the shares I'd been gifted. I walked away from everything and set out on my own.

Nate Piersall threw me a lifeline I didn't know I needed. He ran Core Computing Solutions with his brother Scott, they had built EnCore, a back-office system for the waste industry. Nate gave me complete freedom to pursue an idea: a mobile app for drivers, built on Android, designed to work the way drivers actually worked.

That became eMobile. It was Nate's product, but I was the one who built it and believed in it. My bet was simple: if the tool actually helps the person using it, the data that supervisors care about will be cleaner and better than anything they'd get from a system designed to monitor people. No trap doors. No dead ends. No training manual required.

It worked. Nate and I supported thousands of users before we added anyone else to the team. I'm eternally grateful for his trust.

Core Computing was eventually acquired by Routeware. I stayed on from 2020 to 2025, leading engineering teams, integrating acquisitions, building enterprise software. It was a positive experience. I learned a lot.

But the biggest lesson was one I'd heard before and finally got to live: companies stop innovating as they mature. They shift from building to extracting. I watched it happen. I am a maker, not a taker. So I left to make again, for the industry I call home.

The Gap

Here is what I know: roll-off dispatch is stuck.

On one end, you have spreadsheets. Whiteboards. Drivers calling in. Dispatchers juggling phones and scribbling notes. It works until it does not, until you are running 15 trucks and your dispatcher is drowning.

On the other end, you have enterprise software. Six-figure implementations. Modules you will never use. Consultants. Training. A year before you see value, if you ever do.

In the middle? That is where most haulers actually live. Real complexity. Real logistics problems. But no appetite for a massive software project that costs more than a truck.

That gap has been there my whole career. Nobody has filled it. So I am going to.

Klau

I named it after the Klau Mine, up in the mountains near where I grew up. It is a mercury mine, abandoned now, but it has been there since the 1800s. Mercury used to be called quicksilver. Miners used it to separate gold from waste, to extract what is real from what is not.

That felt right.

Klau is not an all-in-one platform. It is not trying to replace your accounting software or your billing system. It is dispatch. Just dispatch. One thing, done well.

I am building it for the dispatcher who has been running the same operation for fifteen years and knows exactly what they need. They just do not have software that fits how they actually work. I am building it for the owner who has grown from five trucks to twenty and can feel the cracks forming. I am building it for the ops manager who is tired of being told their company is "too small" for real software but "too big" for the free stuff.

Why Now

I am 43. I have got maybe one more big thing in me. This is it.

I am not taking venture money. I am not building to flip. I am building a company that can stay small and stay focused and keep serving the same customers for the next twenty years. This is the way software used to be built, before everyone decided every company had to be a unicorn.

What's Next

Klau is ready. I am looking for 10 founding members to build this with me.

Here is the deal: $30,000 one-time investment, payable over six months, and you lock in a lifetime credit that covers the Large Fleet plan forever. That is $749/month currently. If I raise prices down the road, your credit goes up to match. Your core platform cost stays at zero.

This is not a discount code. It is a bet on each other. You are betting I will build something worth using for the next decade. I am betting you will give me the feedback I need to get it right.

Ten spots. That is it. I want operators who are stuck in that gap I described, real complexity, no appetite for enterprise software, and who want a direct line to the person building the thing.

If that is you, let us talk.

I started in this industry with a torch in my hand, cutting up bins behind the yard. I never forgot what it feels like to be the one doing the work, wondering why everything has to be so hard.

That is who I am building for.