Jerry Edmonds loves the freedom and the rush of trucking. “It’s hurry-up, but organized and structured,” he said. His family – parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles – have all worked in trucking so it’s in his blood.
Almost literally.
Jerry started his own trucking company and bought his first truck – with help from Northern Initiatives using funds from the Department of Treasury’s CDFI Fund – in the summer of 2024. In November, tragedy struck. His truck caught on fire on a Tennessee freeway and he barely escaped with his life.
“I looked behind me and saw smoke coming out of the tail, so I pulled over and put the hazards on,” he remembers. In just a few seconds, the cab got so hot he realized he had to eject, but other trucks were zipping by at 75 mph just inches away. He grabbed the door handle, swung it carefully open, and “slammed my face into the truck like a cartoon character.”
He also ripped his shoulder apart requiring surgery and a six-month rehabilitation. His shoes melted to his feet. The truck was a total loss.
“It was the first time I started a business and I was watching it burn.”
His first call, from the side of the road, was to the insurance company. Then he called Northern Initiatives Commercial Lender Venard Roberson. “It was such a shocking turn of events for a startup business,” Roberson said. “We knew we had to find a way to help him.”
Northern Initiatives quickly “absorbed, flipped and refinanced” his loan, Edmonds said.
“Venard actually met me with his kids on the weekend to sign papers,” Edmonds said. “And then he deferred payments while I was recovering from surgery.”
And now Edmonds is ready to hit the road in his new (to him) 2016 Freightliner Coronado 132. “It’s an older truck but better all the way around,” he said. “It has less electrical things to start a fire.”
