Business
| Bright Hope Capital LLC buys second Black-owned local business |
| Big Prime Hauling joins RJ Leeper Construction |
| Published Monday, February 1, 2021 1:00 pm |
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| PHOTO COURTESY LUQUIRE GEORGE ANDREWS |
| Big Prime Hauling is the second Black-owned business acquired by Bright Hope Capital, which plans to pump new investment into jobs and equipment. |
Bright Hope Capital LLC has bought Big Prime Hauling as its second acquisition.
This deal is Bright Hope Capital’s second investment in a Black-owned business as many months following the January deal to buy construction management and general contractor company R.J. Leeper Construction. Former Charlotte business titans Malcomb Coley, EY Charlotte managing partner, former Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl and Duke Energy executive Lloyd Yates are the primary investors in Bright Hope Capital with the intention of growing and strengthening Black and Hispanic-owned businesses in the Charlotte area.
Big Prime Hauling provides dump truck and over-the-road services.
“We are very excited for Big Prime Hauling to join our growing portfolio of Black- and Hispanic-owned businesses,” Yates said in a statement. “Big Prime’s leadership team has done an outstanding job growing the company with a stellar safety record and excellent service, and we believe this boost in capital and support will allow the company to continue being a valued partner to its customers as they expand to their fullest potential.”
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| Terrell Southerland is founder of Big Prime Hauling. |
Big Prime Hauling founder Terrell Southerland will continue as the company’s president. He founded the company in 2009, with his father as his first driver and expanded from one truck to eight and 10 employees. Terrell also assisted participants in Training2Work, a program in Durham, Johnson and Wake counties to help incarcerated and recently released people with job training and employment, including earning their commercial driver’s license.
“There’s not a lot of opportunity where I come from, so for Lloyd, Malcomb and Mr. McColl to invest in a minority business like Big Prime is great,” Southerland said. “It’s been years of hard work, and I’m just glad that we have a real chance to be successful and help others in this business.”
Said Yates: “We need more entrepreneurs like Terrell who see the value in reaching back to train and provide good jobs to people of color, who are often counted out and overlooked. That’s how we’ll move the needle in social and economic mobility.”
Big Prime Hauling serves both of the Carolinas, and has offices in Gastonia and Raleigh. They offer dump truck hauling to remove excess dirt, concrete, asphalt and debris from construction sites, as well as the transportation of goods nationally. Their construction clients include ES Wagner Co., John E. Jenkins and Rogers Group and Sloan Construction.
Bright Hope Capital’s investment will allow for further expansion, including 25-30 trucks, hiring more than 30 employees and adding state-of-the-art trucking technology. They will also provide 401K, healthcare and education reimbursement plans.
Comments
| Are you hiring for any female dump truck drivers in the Charlotte area |
| Posted on January 4, 2022 |
| It is really great to see that finally there is the recognition that Black-Owned Businesses are worthy of the true investment of capital funding they have worked so hard to obtained, but found it so hard to obtain in the past. But there are 1000's of Black and Brown inspired entrepreneurs in the Charlotte Metro area...who have no where and no one to turn to. They have wonderful business ideas, many of which are designed to fill a much needed void in their communities, and the Charlotte Metro communities at-large. Where is the "help" for them? Where do they go? In 2021, seems like everyone, all of a sudden see all the inequities between the races, but the outreach of capital in the minority communities seems "limited" to minority companies that are already established and making thousands, if not millions of dollars annually, anyway. What does a minority "start-up" business go to get the same kind of attention? For those minorities, that want to start up a business, but don't have the capital to do so, go? Those bright and potentially lucrative ideas end up being just an excellent idea, left unfulfilled on paper. It ends up being an idea that would improve the economic wealth, upward mobility, and generational wealth of Minorities, to be only a pipe dream of what could have been. In reality, these "potential" business owners lack information and support, as well as capital investment. They are told their credit isn't good enough,they don't have any assets, they have too much debt, they don't have the income to sustain a business, as well as other reasons that become an very high obstacle to their dreams of financial stability and wealth. They never get the opportunity to demonstrate their potential for economic growth, sometimes, even out of poverty. These are the same Roadblocks Black and Brown people have heard and/or experienced for decades, be it starting or operating a business, owning a home or property, or getting the necessary information to become economically sound. It is also the driving force behind generational economic gaps between Minorities and Whites in this country. Until we can be honest about "these hurdles" to minority upward mobility, we are only applying a "band-aid" to more systemic underlying problem. |
| Posted on June 20, 2021 |
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