A trucking company in Cleveland is looking to provide a sort of second chance for potential drivers who may have trouble getting hired elsewhere.
The Cleveland-based logistics company, Freewheeling, is owned by childhood friends Demetrius Holmes and Charles Brown and was founded in 2020 with the specific goal of providing employment for people with previous criminal records.
“If you have something on your record, the first thing a person is going to do is judge you,” Holmes explained to News Channel 6 Now. “What we try to do here, we try to look past that.”
Of their 30 current employees, 10 have a prior criminal record, yet the company and these drivers are still crucial in transporting goods such as clothing and produce across the country and throughout the state.
“Can’t judge them based on their past,” Holmes said. “They’re good people. They’re good workers.”
“If you get potatoes in Ohio in the next couple of months, it most likely was on our truck,” Brown added.
Although hiring convicted criminals can come with a unique set of challenges, Holmes and Brown say that the company’s ability to change peoples’ lives makes it all worth it. The two even plan on hiring some new dispatchers soon, with the goal of giving the positions to those who need the opportunity the most.
“We’ll be starting to hire dispatchers as well, and again, we will be looking for those with past criminal background records,” Holmes said.