Celebrating Black Voices in Trucking | Delmard Wood

Rent His Trailer Now

Delmard Wood didn’t want to be a truck driver. His mother was a driver in the 1990s, and he didn’t like that she moved around so much. “I worked at Walgreens; I worked at Arby’s; I worked as a mail guy in a mailroom; and I avoided it as much as I could,” the Alabama native recalls.

Eventually, though, he did become a driver. At the age of 22, he became an owner-operator. That’s when he found out how difficult it was to get a trailer with new authority. 

“When you start, they never tell you that you just don’t make enough gross,” Delmard says. “I got told, ‘No’ too many times when I got my authority. The little guy kept getting told, ‘No,’ because he wasn’t big enough, and his DOT number wasn’t old enough, and they tapped out.”

The challenge gave him an idea. “I thought: ‘I’ll cater to the new authority to create opportunity. I’ll make a yes for every no’.”

He acquired five used trailers, renovated them, and rented them out to other drivers. Each trailer came with a bonus: “I said, ‘If you rent from me, I’ll mentor you, too, because I’ve been in trucking for a long time.”

The offer worked, and there are now more than 200 people in Delmard’s trailer network. That success gave him another idea. “If you don’t have a trailer, you cannot make money — even if it doesn’t belong to you, you need that trailer,” he says. “I went to Rent-A-Center, took their model and remixed it. Now you can rent to own a trailer. After 6 months of making payments on time, you now qualify to own your asset.”

Rent My Trailer Now was born in 2015, and it is now the largest African-American–owned trailer-leasing company in Georgia. Delmard provides used trailers to carriers in Georgia, Texas, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and New York. He leases his trucks out, gives drivers rent-to-own opportunities and even sells his trailers. He prides himself on working with all carriers and welcoming new authority. Again, his idea is working: He has a waitlist of 450 people who want trailers.

Life as an entrepreneur suits Delmard, but he has no plans to slow down. “I really want to teach people exactly what I’m doing, so they can change generations, buy and own land, and do it all over the country,” he says. “This is something you can copy and paste in Florida or California. I get up every day, and I’m intentional about what I do. I don’t wake up without a schedule. It’s something I teach my son, too. This is for my ancestors.”

Keep up with Delmard on Instagram.

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