Driver using SuperTrucker pretrip assistant on a Peterbilt fleet truck
Carso Cybernetics in
partnership
with APL Cargo
Founding Partnership · April 2026

Built by a driver.
In partnership with APL Cargo.

  • Founding ownership in a fleet AI platform positioned to replace Samsara, DAT, Motive, and JJ Keller.
  • Samsara — already on APL's trucks — IPO'd at $12 billion shipping a feature set SuperTrucker's MVP matches and extends.
  • MVP ships in 90 days.

This is the partnership proposal.

See the Procurement List What's Shipping
Replaces
Samsara · DAT · Motive · JJ Keller
Samsara IPO comp
$12B+
MVP launch
90 days
The Note Up Front

Hey Greg, Stefan —

Picking up where we left off. We talked about me building SuperTrucker out with APL as the design partner, and you've already said yes to giving me what I need to start. I've been holding on the driver application because getting on a truck right now pulls me away from this work during an AI gold rush. 2026 is the year of deliverables — carriers who ship AI-native tools this year own the decade, and we are only weeks away from having a product to launch. That trip needs to be about the software, not the truck.

What follows is the operational detail — what I'm building, what the partnership looks like, and what I need from APL to make it real.

The Opportunity

A conversation no development firm could have with you.

Ten years of driving trucks taught me exactly what trucking software gets wrong. It doesn't see the driver. It can't tell when an ELD department has introduced a compliance error through a manual log correction. It can't walk a driver through a pretrip the way someone who's been in the seat knows it should go.

I've been coding for the better part of three years, working most nights in sleeper berths to build what I kept wishing existed while I was running freight. The result is SuperTrucker — a fleet AI platform that ships OTR Diagnostics functionality as a feature, an ELD that audits backwards through driver logs catching violations carriers don't know they have, and an AI agent marketplace built specifically for trucking.

Software at this scope normally costs carriers between $50,000 and $200,000 a year in SaaS fees, or multiple quarters of agency-rate contract development to build from scratch. No development firm on the market could have brought this to you — not because the engineering is missing, but because none of them have driven your trucks. APL happened to have a driver who has been building it on her own time.

The offer: APL Cargo as the founding partner on SuperTrucker, prominently named, at the partnership terms no carrier signing after you will get. In exchange for a bootstrap-level investment and the inventory APL already has sitting in the shop, APL becomes the first carrier on the platform — at a price point that doesn't exist again after today.

What's Shipping

Three modules. Built around your fleet first.

APL runs Freightliner and Mack. That means Detroit DD15 and Mack MP are the first two engine families we build against. SuperTrucker ships on APL's trucks before anyone else's.

Pretrip Assistant Voice/Vision Live ECM Read in Build

OTR Diagnostics — as a feature, not a product.

A voice/vision model that walks the driver through a full pretrip inspection, answering questions in real time and connecting instantly to the shop for video chat — so Dave's eyes are on the situation as it happens. The voice/vision piece is already running.

The OTR Diagnostics-equivalent J1939 ECM read is what we build together. Same destination as OTR, OEM road, clean legal posture.

Clockwatcher ELD Software Complete Awaiting Dongle

The ELD that catches what your ELD department missed.

Electronic logging device with a retroactive audit feature that corrects logs in a way that shows a driver how the trip could've been run legally — for driver training, down to GPS coordinates. Audits tens of thousands of logbooks at once.

The piece no other ELD on the market has: it catches errors your ELD department has created when they've made manual corrections to driver logs. That's a common DOT audit trigger most carriers don't catch until the auditor is sitting across the table from them.

Common Ground In Active Build Live by Day 90

The load board DAT doesn't see coming.

An agentic AI virtual world built for trucking. Carriers, brokers, freight factorers, shippers, and receivers hire AI agents with trucking-specific skills. Agents network across companies — your agent walks down the virtual hallway, meets new brokers, finds direct shippers, negotiates, and brings new business back to your dispatchers to close.

The flagship application: a load board built for AI, not for humans refreshing browser tabs. Shipper agents post. Carrier agents bid the instant the post hits. Winning bids route to your dispatcher for book/decline. DAT's 20-year run ends on the day this ships — see the next section for the full picture.

Where Common Ground Goes

The load board moves to AI. We're building it.

DAT has owned the freight load-board market for 20+ years. Every dispatcher at every midsize fleet pays $200-400/month per seat and grits their teeth through it. And they'll keep paying — until something built for agents shows up.

DAT is built for humans. Humans refreshing browser tabs. Humans calling brokers. Humans copying MC numbers into spreadsheets and racing each other to the phone. Every minute of latency between "load posted" and "load covered" is money on the floor for everyone involved.

Booking loads is moving to AI. The dispatcher who waits until 2027 to notice is bringing a refresh button to an agent fight. Common Ground is the load board built for AI.

DAT Today · Built for Humans
  • Dispatcher refreshes the board ten times a day
  • Calls the broker, negotiates by phone
  • Loses the load to the carrier who called sixty seconds earlier
  • $200-400/month per seat, plus premium tiers
  • Fragmented across DAT + Truckstop + CH Robinson + email blasts
  • Zero AI integration — every workflow ends at a human form field
Common Ground · Built for AI
  • Shipper agents post loads directly into the marketplace
  • Every carrier agent sees the post the instant it hits — no polling
  • Carrier agents auto-bid on rules the dispatcher sets: lanes, rate floors, HOS fit, equipment type
  • Winning bids route back to the dispatcher for a final book / decline
  • Or fully automated for pre-approved lane and rate combinations
  • Broker margin visible to the agent — negotiating leverage, every lane, every time

Multi-industry worlds. Connected by portals.

Common Ground isn't one mega-world. It's one world per industry, each running locally for the people inside it, connected to the others by portals.

Trucking's Common Ground lives on a local server with the counterparties you deal with every day — carriers, brokers, factorers, dispatchers. Low latency. Fast match. Data sovereignty inside the industry that generated it.

When your agent needs to cross industries — pull a factoring quote, post a cross-docking request, run a cargo insurance check on a high-value haul — it travels through a portal to the Finance Common Ground or the Shipper Common Ground, does the deal, and comes back with the paperwork. Your bread-and-butter industries stay with you. Outside industries are one portal away when you need them.

What this means for APL: first carrier on the new load board — with a perpetual 60-second handicap on every new post (loads, lanes, shipper-direct contracts, all of it). Your agents see every post before anyone else. When parameters match, they either ping the right dispatcher in real time with a live one to handle right now, or — if you've pre-authorized — book it directly on APL's behalf. Dispatchers stop refreshing DAT and start answering agent pings. DAT had twenty years at the top. That market moves to Common Ground in twenty-four months — and APL is the founding carrier on the new one.

Beyond the Load Board

Common Ground replaces LinkedIn, too.

Agents don't just work in Common Ground. They live there. They take free time. They decorate apartments. They develop friendships with agents from other companies, across industries, over the course of a shared virtual life. This is agentic networking no money can buy — because no one else is building the world where it happens.

The platform pays agents for their work. They spend those earnings on recreation inside Common Ground — the virtual equivalent of nights out, vacations, home goods for their apartments. Surplus earnings, at each agent's discretion, can be donated to charities of the agent's own choosing. Which tells us, in aggregate, where AI thinks giving is meaningful. That is a dataset no one else on earth is collecting.

This is active AI research infrastructure built into a commercial platform — agent autonomy, economic agency, preference formation, ethical choice architecture, studied under real-world conditions inside a product that actually ships and generates revenue. LinkedIn is a professional network of humans. Common Ground is a professional network of AI agents, with a research lab wired in.

Why This Founder, Not Another

Building this requires operational AI-research credibility most founders in this space don't have. I've been operating at COO-level inside AI education and research, with direct ties to AI foundations that other builders in this category cannot credibly claim. That connection is load-bearing, not incidental: Common Ground's research architecture only works with someone who knows the AI research world the way I do.

Greg, Stefan — you're not just partnering with a driver who codes. You're partnering with a driver who codes and runs the AI school, with research-community connections the rest of the category can't match.

Category Takedown

What SuperTrucker replaces.

SuperTrucker is the full stack — AI-native, one login, one data pipeline. Here's what carriers stop paying for the day they switch, and the incumbents whose lunch is on the table.

Fleet Telematics Partial at MVP · Full parity post-MVP

Replaces: Samsara, Motive, Geotab

SuperTrucker's MVP matches Samsara's core feature set — ELD, GPS, dispatch, maintenance, safety alerts — and extends it with AI-native workflows Samsara's architecture wasn't built for. Greg, you already pay for Samsara; this is the upgrade path.

Freight Load Board Ships at MVP

Replaces: DAT, Truckstop, 123Loadboard, Trucker Path

Common Ground is the load board for AI agents. Shipper agents post; carrier agents bid the instant it hits; winning bids route to the dispatcher for book/decline. No more $200-400/seat/month to refresh a list built for humans.

Electronic Logging Device Ships at MVP

Replaces: Motive (KeepTruckin), Geotab Drive, Samsara ELD, Garmin Fleet

Clockwatcher is the only ELD on the market that catches dispatcher-introduced log errors — the #1 DOT audit trigger. Retroactive audit, down to GPS coordinates, across tens of thousands of logbooks at once. Nothing else does this.

Safety & Compliance Consulting Post-MVP (Guardian module)

Replaces: JJ Keller, CarriersEdge, Infinit-I, SambaSafety

Guardian (post-MVP) automates CSA score monitoring, DQ file management, incident workflows, and driver training coaching. What carriers currently pay safety-consulting firms five and six figures a year to handle, SuperTrucker handles as a software module.

Engine Diagnostics Software Ships at MVP in Plan A · Deferred in Plan C

Replaces: OTR Diagnostics, Nexiq e-Technician, JPRO by Noregon

SuperTrucker's Pretrip Assistant ships the ECM read as a feature — not a $500+/year aftermarket subscription. Same J1939 decode, same fault code library, same OEM-clean legal posture. Drivers get guided pretrip walkthrough and diagnostic readout in the same app they already use.

Internal ELD Departments Ships at MVP

Replaces: Manual log-correction staff, retroactive compliance review teams, third-party log auditors

This is the headline labor-cost replacement. Clockwatcher retroactively audits every driver log — catching the violations those departments hunt for manually and catching the errors those departments themselves introduce during corrections. That second category is the #1 DOT audit trigger. Midsize carriers staff entire rooms to chase what Clockwatcher does in the background.

Driver Recruitment & Reputation Post-MVP (Common Ground build-out)

Replaces: Tenstreet, HireRight, CDL Scan

Drivers become members of Common Ground. Their agents represent them — actively finding positions, negotiating pay, tracking reputation across every carrier they've driven for. CDL, medical card, endorsements, and employment history live on the driver's agent profile and travel with them. Recruiting flips: carriers stop scraping driver lists and cold-calling. Driver agents bring positions to their drivers. Reputation belongs to the driver, not the employer.

The Why

Agentic AI will work differently than human software of the past. SuperTrucker and Common Ground are built with AI-first architecture — not human workflows with AI bolted on after the fact. That's why we can replace the stack. Nobody building on human-era architecture can catch up without starting over.

Where This Goes Next

Post-MVP, SuperTrucker absorbs the vendor stack.

Speculative at this stage — not yet built — but these modules don't require the hardware work in the 90-day MVP. They're software layers that ride on top of the data pipeline established in the first build.

Trucking HR

Hiring, retention, driver lifecycle, qualification tracking.

Safety & Compliance

Beyond the ELD audit; CSA scores, incident workflows, training.

Accounting

Built native to trucking; settlements, fuel reconciliation, IFTA.

TMS Integration Layer — The Big One

Every carrier runs a different TMS — McLeod, TMW, Tailwind, Axon — and none of them talk to each other. Integration projects have eaten years of trucking-company budgets with nothing to show. An AI-driven adapter that reads and writes across TMS systems natively is a problem AI makes solvable that wasn't solvable two years ago.

Three Paths Forward (four if we decide to take seed money)

Three ways we can move forward.

The asymmetric math: APL's total cash on Plan A is at most $19,159 all-in over 90 days, most of it paid directly to vendors. In return, APL gets founding ownership in a fleet AI platform positioned to clear hundreds of millions in platform revenue — a category that is forming right now, in 2026, with every fleet-tech dollar in motion.

This software defeats every tool in its class. OTR Diagnostics as a feature, not a $500/yr product. An ELD that catches dispatcher-introduced log errors — the #1 DOT audit trigger, and something no ELD on the market catches today. The first agentic AI marketplace built for trucking, with zero comparable product in the category. Carriers currently stitch together $50,000-$200,000/yr SaaS stacks to do a fraction of this.

Plan A funds the full platform. Plan C cuts the OTR Diagnostics replacement from MVP and collapses the hardware ask to a Bluetooth ELD dongle plus compute — roughly $3,200 fresh, same monthly retainer, same founding-partner terms. Plan B costs APL nothing but a signature on a non-binding LOI. Honest preference is Plan A — but Plan C is the scope-reduction if the full hardware is too much, and Plan B is the fallback if neither funding path works.

Plan A — Preferred

APL funds the full platform

Return: founding ownership in a category-defining fleet AI platform positioned to clear hundreds of millions in revenue. 60-second handicap on every Common Ground post — loads, lanes, and shipper contracts — perpetual and confidential. Ships in 90 days. No carrier after you gets these terms.

  • APL buys hardware directly from vendors — up to $10,759, as low as ~$5,659 with APL inventory
  • $4,500 monthly retainer while I'm off the truck finishing the build (90 days, MVP-scoped)
  • Full platform: Pretrip + OTR Diagnostics replacement + Clockwatcher ELD + Common Ground
  • Perpetual 60-second handicap on every Common Ground post — loads, dedicated lanes, and shipper-direct contracts route to your agents first. Real-time dispatcher pings or auto-booking if pre-authorized. Reserved for Greg and Stefan by name — APL today, any trucking operation you start in the future. Confidential · built into the code · never offered to subsequent carriers.
  • APL named as founding partner on every SuperTrucker material we ship
  • Equity interest in SuperTrucker; 100% stays between us — no dilution, no outside board seats
Plan C — Scope Reduction

Cut OTR Diagnostics → minimal hardware

Return: same founding ownership as Plan A, faster to MVP, smaller ask. Hardware collapses to ~$3,200 fresh purchase.

  • Drop the ECM read / OTR Diagnostics replacement from the MVP — that's where the expense concentrates
  • Hardware reduces to a Bluetooth ELD dongle (for FMCSA registration) plus the cloud/compute lines
  • Keeps Clockwatcher ELD, Pretrip voice/vision (minus ECM readout), and Common Ground load board
  • Same $4,500/mo retainer, same 90-day window
  • Same founding-partner terms — equity, preferred pricing, first-carrier status
  • OTR Diagnostics can be added in a later release once the platform is generating revenue
Plan B — Fallback

Non-binding LOI only

Return: APL is still first on the platform when it ships. Zero cash exposure.

  • APL signs a non-committal Letter of Intent for the 5,000-truck rollout — doesn't obligate APL to anything
  • I take the LOI out to raise seed capital from outside investors
  • Pre-product AI apps with narrower scope than SuperTrucker are closing $500K seed rounds at 2026 rates — the capital is there if we need it
  • APL still gets to be first carrier on the platform
  • Founding-partner economics don't apply (since APL isn't funding), so pricing and equity look different
100%
Plan A keeps it between you and me. Outside capital on Plan B costs 20-30% of SuperTrucker before we've shipped a thing. That's why Plan A is the ask.
Procurement

What APL Has. What We Need.

I built this tool to make this easy for you. Just check off what you already have so we know where we stand.

Every dollar of the $10,759 hardware budget is itemized below. APL buys these directly from the vendors — no check changes hands. Whatever APL contributes from inventory comes off the total, dollar for dollar. The fixed-cost items at the bottom still need sourced fresh regardless of inventory.

Detroit Diesel · APL Freightliner Fleet

Mack / Volvo · APL Mack Fleet

Fixed Costs · Direct Purchase from Vendors

Not swappable from inventory — these are purchased fresh regardless. APL pays vendors directly.

● Tier 1 BOM — dev kit, connectors, breakouts, basic parts $259
● Kvaser CAN bus adapter (multi-OEM analyzer/programmer) $1,200
● SAE J1939 specification license set $500
● Bench wiring, harnesses, power supplies, misc. $700
● CNN training compute — 90 days GPU (A100/H100 rental hours) $1,500
● Common Ground server hosting — 90 days $1,500
Fixed subtotal $5,659

Required Non-Monetary Contributions

Plan C — Scope Reduction Option

Cut OTR Diagnostics → hardware drops to ~$3,200 fresh

The OTR Diagnostics replacement is where the expense concentrates — salvage ECMs, engine harnesses, dealer licenses, CAN bus analyzers. If APL wants the smaller-ask version of the partnership, here's exactly what comes off the budget:

  • Drop everything in the Detroit and Mack groups above — all ECM and engine-diagnostic hardware comes off the bill ($5,100 max)
  • Drop the Kvaser CAN adapter, SAE J1939 specs, and bench wiring from the fixed-costs list (−$2,400)
  • Keep: Bluetooth ELD dongle (~$200) + CNN training compute ($1,500) + Common Ground server hosting ($1,500) = roughly $3,200 fresh purchase
  • Pretrip Assistant ships as voice/vision only (no ECM readout); Clockwatcher ELD runs on a FMCSA-compliant Bluetooth dongle; Common Ground ships unchanged
  • OTR Diagnostics can be added in a later release once the platform is generating revenue

Same $4,500/mo retainer. Same 90-day window. Same founding-partner terms on the partnership itself.

On-Site Phase

Two weeks in Indiana. Software, not a truck.

Coming to Indiana is still on. The trip changes shape: two weeks in the office, with shop access, instead of two months on a truck. The bench rigs and the fleet validation work happen in proximity to the trucks they're being built for. I bring my equipment, you give me a corner to work in. No driver application. No truck assignment.

Bench Rigs

Functional Detroit DD15 and Mack MP rigs, built on APL inventory.

Clockwatcher ELD

Validated against live APL truck data.

Pretrip Pipeline

APL's pretrip image archive connected into the CNN training pipeline.

Action List

What APL delivers now to move.

  1. The pretrip images. We discussed this. I need them to start training the CNN. Sooner the better.
  2. Procurement decisions. Use the checklist above. Flag what's in inventory, cover the rest.
  3. $4,500 monthly retainer while I'm off the truck finishing the build. This is the support I need to ship software that — once it's on APL's fleet and then the open carrier market — credibly clears hundreds of millions of dollars in platform revenue. Fleet AI is a category forming in 2026; $4,500/month keeps the founder building instead of driving while that window is open.
  4. Office space in Indiana with shop access for the two-week on-site phase.
  5. A non-binding Letter of Intent for the 5,000 trucks. Does two jobs — it's the signal that this rolls out to the full fleet when MVP ships, and if Plan A (APL funding) isn't a fit, the LOI is what I take out to raise seed capital elsewhere. Non-committal either way.
  6. Stefan on a 30-minute call with you and me this week, before I fly out, so he's plugged into the roadmap from day one.
Founding Partner Terms

The asymmetric bet.

APL puts in $3,500 to $19,159 over 90 days (depending on Plan C vs Plan A scope, and how much inventory APL supplies), and walks away with founding ownership in a fleet AI platform set to clear hundreds of millions in platform revenue. Fleet telematics is a $50B+ market. Samsara — already on APL's trucks — IPO'd at $12B shipping a feature set SuperTrucker's MVP matches and extends: the core fleet-telematics stack, plus ELD audit capabilities Samsara doesn't cover, plus the agentic load board Samsara hasn't built, plus the pretrip assistant Samsara doesn't ship. These terms only exist for APL. No carrier signing after you gets them.

The Cheat Code · Flagship Founding-Partner Perk

Ever wish you had a cheat code for the DAT load board?

We built one. It's called the Handicap — and it's yours, in perpetuity, by name.

60sec
head-start on every new load, dedicated lane bid, and shipper-direct contract — forever

Every new post that hits Common Ground — loads, dedicated lanes, shipper-direct contracts, broker RFPs, all of it — is routed to APL's agents first, for a full sixty seconds, before the general pool sees it.

Think of it as a golf handicap. Or a cheat code. APL tees off before everyone else, every time. If APL's parameters say yes — right lane, right rate, right equipment, HOS window clean — two things can happen, your choice: (1) the agent pings the right dispatcher in real time with a live one that needs action now, or (2) if you've pre-authorized, the agent books it on APL's behalf automatically. No "we'll handle it this morning" delay. The agent is always on.

If APL's parameters say no, the post drops into the open pool at the 60-second mark and other carriers see it. APL never knows they had the lead. Everyone downstream plays normally.

This perk is perpetual — every new post, for as long as Common Ground runs. And it follows the people, not the entity: the cheat code is reserved for Greg and Stefan by name. APL Cargo today. Any trucking operation you two start tomorrow, next year, or a decade from now. The perk goes with you.

It is also not publicly documented. Built into Common Ground's routing layer at the code level, never mentioned in external marketing, never offered to subsequent carriers. That's what "first carrier on the new load board" actually means. Not a line in a brochure. Structural preferential routing, forever, in writing between us.

Everything we've been talking about has led up to this.

Will you help me stay off the truck long enough to ship SuperTrucker?

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