By Ryan Paterson
About a year ago, Tom Klauer pulled me into the auto recycling industry. I came in with a career spent around technology and operations, but not with a lifetime of experience buying vehicles, running self-service recycling facilities, or understanding yard economics.
Tom and many of the operators I have met since then had that experience. What I brought was a different lens, shaped by the Marine Corps, DARPA, IST Research, and years spent watching technology succeed or fail in demanding operational environments.
The first thing I learned is that auto recycling is far more sophisticated than many outsiders understand. It is easy to see analog workflows, disconnected systems, spreadsheets, phone calls, and manual handoffs. Those things exist, but they should not be mistaken for a lack of sophistication. The best operators carry deep intelligence about supply, demand, vehicle mix, parts velocity, towing economics, commodity prices, customer behavior, labor constraints, and timing. Much of that knowledge has been earned over decades and is embedded in the business’s rhythm.
That changed how I think about technology in this market. The opportunity is not to replace operator judgment with software. It is to capture more of that judgment, connect it to better information, and help operators apply it more consistently.
At IST Research, we had a phrase for this kind of work: Double Helix Development. The idea was that technology and operations have to co-evolve. Technologists and operators need to work closely enough that each changes the other. As technology creates new possibilities, operators imagine new ways to work. As operators test those ideas against reality, technologists learn what actually matters.
The same principle applies directly to auto recycling. The next chapter of this industry will not be built by software teams sitting apart from recyclers and guessing what they need. It will be built by technologists and operators working together, close enough to challenge assumptions and honest enough to say when something looks good in a demo but fails on a busy Monday morning.
One of the most encouraging things
I have seen is that many of the best operators are not waiting for technology to arrive. They are helping design it. The investors who have joined us represent ownership of roughly 75 self-service recycling yards, and they are bringing far more than capital. They bring operating history, market knowledge, strong opinions, and a willingness to pressure-test ideas before they become products.
Every week, we hold design sessions with different groups of operators. These are practical discussions about where margin is won and lost: how vehicles are sourced, how bids are made, how inventory becomes visible, how demand is understood, how data moves through the business, and where disconnected systems create drag.
After a year, several themes feel clear. Vehicle acquisition is becoming a strategic center of the business. Data only matters if it changes a decision in time to make a difference. The physical yard remains essential, but now the market begins before the customer reaches the gate. Integration is no longer a convenience; it is a margin issue. Artificial intelligence will matter only if it is grounded in real operating data and shaped by people who understand the work.
I came into auto recycling expecting to work on software. I have stayed excited because the operational problem is much richer than that. This is an industry built by practical entrepreneurs with deep local knowledge and hard-earned judgment.
The opportunity ahead is not simply to modernize them. It is to help them buy better, process smarter, sell wider, integrate faster, and turn their own operating knowledge into a competitive advantage.
Ryan Paterson is a technology executive and entrepreneur who brings more than three decades of experience from the defense, intelligence, and national security sectors into the automotive recycling industry. A former Marine Corps officer and DARPA leader, he has built and deployed advanced technology systems in some of the world’s most demanding environments.
Today, as CEO of Crush Software Solutions, he is focused on helping recyclers use software, data, and automation to buy smarter, operate more efficiently, and compete in a rapidly changing market.
