After taking the darkest time in his life and turning it into a lesson, Ed Henningsis now moving forward and giving back. After being sentenced to 40 years and spending 20 in prison, he is on his third business endeavor; but it all started in 2016, once he was released.
“A lot of people say ‘You had 40 years!’ and all I seen was I got a chance,” said Hennings. “20 years later, I got out, and that’s what I was able to hold on to, that I had a chance.”
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Over the past seven years, Ed has done a lot with that second chance. He started a barbershop within a year of being released from prison, and just four months after his shop opened, was inspired to take on another challenge.
“A client sat in my chair, I was cutting his hair, and he was telling me about a truck that he had purchased and the type of work he was doing with it, and I thought to myself ‘wow, man, I think I got in the wrong business.’”
That week he bought his first truck and began another business called Go-Time Trucking.
“Six in the morning to six in the evening I would be doing deliveries and I would get out of the truck and cut hair from six at night to eleven-o-clock at night, seven days a week.”
After two years of working double duty, Ed is now focusing on trucking full-time. But if you ask him what he does for a living, driving won’t be his answer.
“My main business really is inspiration," he said. "So, I will always push and have different endeavors as I go forward.”
He’s using that inspiration to hire other formerly incarcerated people to work under him and make a living. He says being someone that has walked the same path makes a difference in understanding people in that position.
Todd Jones has been driving for Ed for almost a year now and says that understanding the system and what they both went through, means everything.
“I’m incredibly grateful that I had especially him, someone that I knew because so much of it boils down to trust of the individual,” said Jones.
Now, Ed has started a new chapter: a shoe company made by truckers for truckers called Ed Hennings Shoes & Boots. As he steps into this new role, his goal remains the same: setting an example for others that hard times come with hard-earned lessons and a path toward a better future.
“There’s some things that a piece of coal has to go through before it becomes a diamond,” Hennings said.
Ed is also an author and spends time speaking to current inmates about his story.
His new shoes are for sale now on his website.
