Build vs. rent: Why Nationwide Haul retired three CRMs for ones its own team built

Nationwide Haul sells and services semi-trucks. Its sister company, Road Ready Insurance, insures them. Between them they ran three CRMs (HubSpot, GoHighLevel and Pipedrive) for roughly 60 to 70 people, held together by a sprawling Zapier build. Led by Derek Madon and Patrick Brooks, the team built their own CRMs in Claude Code, retired all three, took both websites in-house, and now save $300K+ a year.

Derek MadonOwner & CEO

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$300K+

Saved per year

From retired software, outside website bills and recovered time

CRMs retired

Along with the Zapier build that tied HubSpot, GoHighLevel and Pipedrive together

60-70

People moved onto CRMs the team built

Including admins who had worked in all three old systems

Industry: Trucking & Insurance
Companies: Nationwide Haul, Road Ready Insurance
Engagement: Since September 2025
Built with: Claude, Claude Code, Vercel, Cloudflare

The challenge

Three CRMs, one Zapier build, and websites they could not touch

Two businesses ran on rented software. Work was split across HubSpot, GoHighLevel and Pipedrive, with about 25 to 30 users in each and admins maintaining all three. A sprawling Zapier build moved data between them. At Road Ready, four service reps read the same shared inbox, so every request got read four times. And both companies' websites sat with an outside vendor: a simple change meant a request and a bill.

We came in with zero AI experience. Five months later my team builds our own websites, our own CRM, our own dashboards, and we cancelled a stack of software we'd been paying for for years. OneWave didn't sell us a tool. They taught us to build.

Derek MadonOwner & CEO · Nationwide Haul

Our approach

Their team builds, we coach

Derek chose the harder path on day one: his team would build, and we would coach. We trained Derek, Patrick, Adriana and Ociel on Claude in October 2025, then moved the builders into Claude Code. When a build needed a second pair of hands (back-end connectors, DNS, the GovSpend data feed), we built that part and handed it back.

How it came together

From the first training session to running both companies on software they own.

AI foundationsOct 2025
Hands-on Claude training for Derek, Patrick, Adriana and Ociel, plus an Intercom Fin pilot on the Road Ready site.
The dealership CRMFeb 2026
Patrick Brooks demos a dealership CRM he built in Claude Code in about 8 to 10 working days.
The insurance CRMApr 2026
Derek demos the Road Ready CRM he built, with ticketing that replaces the shared service inbox.
Pipedrive retiredJun 2026
The whole team moves onto the CRM they built. HubSpot, GoHighLevel and the Zapier build go with it.
Sales intelligenceAug 2026
We hand the sales team a live GovSpend dashboard, built by OneWave, for tracking public-sector buying.

The result

Two companies on software they own

The $300K+ a year is the retired CRM and Zapier subscriptions, the outside website bills, and the hours nobody spends keeping three systems in sync anymore. The leadership team counts control as the bigger win. Both companies used to wait on an outside vendor to change their own websites. Now they make the change themselves.

Before

HubSpot, GoHighLevel and Pipedrive
A Zapier build gluing the three together
Outside vendors running both websites
A shared service inbox read by four reps

After

Dealership CRM, built by Patrick Brooks
Road Ready insurance CRM with ticketing, built by Derek Madon
Both company websites, run in-house
GovSpend sales-intelligence dashboard, built by OneWave

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