Developers

Would you use a computer system created by these men . . . ?

The story of Cruise Software is an interesting one that began in about 1982.  That year Tony Harvey's, the president of Cruise Software, father purchased a lumber yard.  It was a small store (less then $500,000 annually) in a one horse town named Burlington Indiana.  Tony was then a freshman in high school and tried to help his dad improved the efficiency of the store, Barnard Lumber, by automating their accounts receivable.  Using a Commodore 64, Tony wrote a system that tracked invoices and produced statements.

Customers were furious!  They couldn't believe we were no longer photo-copying a ledger card and mailing it to them.  It was the first of many lumber companies lives that Tony was to shake up.

Tony moved on from the Commodore 64 to a network of the newly emerging personal computers in 1983.  Barnard Lumber had the largest pc network in Carroll County, Indiana that year.  Two computers tied together sharing a common printer and starting to track inventory, sales, purchasing, and general ledger.

In 1984 Tony was conned into playing drums in a pit-band for a friend (a girl!) in a nearby community.  Tony showed up, drums in tow, in Logansport Indiana and met Mike McCord who was playing guitar for the same group.  Tony and Mike were friendly and had several practices together before Tony learned that Mike's father also owned a lumber yard.  Even more amazing was that Mike had been computerizing his store for the last few years using a company out of Austin Texas named ProfitMaster.

Tony and Mike remained friendly over the next few years and would often take turns calling the others store late at night to see if the other was still working - they were!   During the summers between college Tony started working at Mikes store, Logansport Lumber, and became involved in helping them integrate personal computers into their store.

After college Tony started doing consulting work with building materials retailers across the country and in Canada showing them how to get the most out of their computer systems, personal computers, and other software packages like; cabinet estimating, house estimating, spread sheets, databases and the like.

In 1992 Tony and Mike joined forces to start Harvey & McCord Consulting.  A company that focused on helping people in the building materials business make their stores more profitable by reducing inventory and increasing their use of technology.   By now Mike was on the board-of-directors of ProfitMaster.  In late 1992 the circumstances at Profitmaster had become desperate.  They needed someone to help them fix some problems and restore a degree of confidence in their user base. As Mike and Tony had done lots of work for other Profitmaster customers and Mike was on the board Tony was hired to work at Profitmaster.  Tony started working just before Christmas, 1992.

At Profitmaster Tony learned many valuable lessons about the computer industry.   Number one was that a lot of people lie when they are selling computers.  Two was that still more people didn't know what a good computer needed to do to run a lumber yard.  After months of disagreements with management and an eventual buyout by CSD (who was later bought by Triad, who was later bought by CCS, et. al) Tony left to start Cruise Software.

Cruise's first day writing was November 1, 1993 and their first day live in a $4 million dollar a year store with two locations was August 1, 1994.  A somewhat aggressive development cycle by any estimate and one we don't want to repeat again.

Today Cruise has many customers all across the U.S. and we are happy to have built that base by honestly providing the best solution possible for building materials retailers.