At a major AI data center construction site in Abilene, Texas, Mike Van Sickel watched hundreds of trucks moving material. He also saw paper tickets being signed by hand for each load. The project was being built for one of the most advanced industries in the world, yet a crucial part of its construction still depended on a process Van Sickel knew from his first construction job in 1996.
Van Sickel spent nearly 30 years in construction before building Williamsburg-based Iron Sheepdog. At the contractor where he worked, software helped bid jobs, manage projects and handle accounting. Trucking was different. Paper tickets piled up until someone could collect them, compare them with invoices and work out what the company owed. That delay made it harder to know what a job was actually costing while the work was underway.
The problem came into focus when Van Sickel offered two trucking brokers a share of roughly $25 million in additional work. Both turned him down. They were already tracking changes to jobs and rates on legal pads, waiting for drivers to bring tickets back to the office and spending weekends assembling invoices. Discrepancies could delay payment. Taking on more work meant taking on more paperwork and more pressure on their cash flow.
Iron Sheepdog gives brokers a way to dispatch jobs and gives drivers a way to see the assignment and rate, accept the work and record loads digitally. The aim is to give everyone a clearer record of where trucks went, what they moved and what they should be paid. But Van Sickel discovered that solving the paperwork problem was only part of the job. “The challenge was never the software. The challenge was the adoption,” he said on Fervent Four.
Brokers and drivers had to trust Iron Sheepdog with information about their customers, rates and work. They also needed a system that fit their businesses instead of another contractor-specific app for every job. Van Sickel described one broker who can now dispatch trucks in Texas while visiting family in Colombia. That is a much harder business to run when the proof of each job has to make its way back to an office on paper.
Iron Sheepdog was operating in 17 states at the time of the conversation. Van Sickel sees an opportunity beyond replacing tickets: using information from those jobs to spot trucks waiting at sites, driving back empty or being sent where they are not needed. Better coordination could help brokers and contractors get more work done with the trucks already on the road. That broader system is still being built.
The trucks at the Abilene data center show why it matters. Even the AI boom depends on a network of drivers, brokers and contractors moving material and accounting for every load. On this episode of Fervent Four, Van Sickel explains what it takes to make that overlooked system work better.
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