Donnell McAllister stood in the back of a U-Haul and mentally pieced together how dozens of boxes and pieces of furniture would fit together like a jigsaw puzzle in the 26-foot truck.
“You never know what someone is going to bring out for you to try and put in a spot,” McAllister said. “It’s basically a test, and I like being tested.”
McAllister, 26, works for D3 Delivery, a Fayetteville-based appliance delivery and moving company that serves customers in Scotland, Robeson, Cumberland, and Hoke counties.
Jelissa Thomas, founder and chief executive of D3 Delivery, started the company in 2021 with a goal of hiring workers who have been incarcerated or are recovering from addiction. She said she knew many people in Laurinburg, where she grew up, who struggled to find jobs because of their checkered pasts.
The company is small, and Thomas hasn’t hired anyone yet with a criminal record or drug addiction. But she’s hoping that will change.
In August, D3 Delivery received $1,500 from Fayetteville’s Empowering Community Safety Micro-Grant Program to pilot an initiative to hire workers, particularly Black men, who might be deemed unemployable by other companies. D3 Delivery was among 20 businesses and organizations to receive a total of $84,500 from the city’s economic and community development department.
“Once you get labeled as a felon, it prevents certain doors from being opened,” Thomas said. “Especially in Laurinburg, once you get in trouble, you don’t have access but to so many jobs, so I wanted to be able to give people who did something in their past an opportunity.”
The program hopes to offer more than a paycheck. D3 Delivery wants to coordinate with NCWorks Career Center and local groups dedicated to helping inmates reenter society. Once she completes her master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling at UNC Pembroke, Thomas wants to provide mental health services to the employees.
About 25% of North Carolinians have a criminal history, according to the N.C. Department of Adult Correction. In 2022, Black men in the state were arrested at a rate 3.7 times higher than white men, according to a report from the Criminal Justice Analysis Center under the N.C. Department of Public Safety.
Black people accounted for 46% of arrests in North Carolina last year but only about 20% of the population, state data shows. In Cumberland County, Black people accounted for 67% of arrests while making up 37% of the population.
The region served by D3 Delivery struggles with substance misuse. Although the number of fatal drug overdose rates fell significantly in 2024, Robeson, Scotland, and Cumberland counties still had the highest rates in the state that year, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. Robeson and Scotland counties also had among the highest rates of overdose emergency department visits in the state.
Thomas’ work hits close to home. She said she spent a lot of time as a child visiting her father in prison and recovery centers. When her dad wasn’t behind bars, she said, he worked in construction.
Finding a job can be extremely challenging for people with criminal records. Thirty-three percent of incarcerated people didn’t find employment within four years after their release from federal prison in 2010, according to a study published in 2022 by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. Those who found work had to wait more than six months to land their first job and held an average of 3.4 jobs across the study period.
Dale Thomas, D3 Delivery’s crew lead and a relative of the company’s founder, said he has friends who have struggled to find a job due to stigma.
“People are quick to judge their next man for their past,” he said, “Instead of actually sitting and having a conversation with them, seeing their goals and the things they’ve achieved since then.”
McAllister has never been in jail or in recovery. But he said he recognizes the importance of the pilot program. He said he was fired by another moving company because he missed a day of work to handle a traffic ticket.
“At D3, I don’t have those problems,” McAllister said. “I can communicate with them and tell them, ‘I have a court date, or I have an appointment,’ and they’ll be like ‘Okay, if we can’t do the job, we’ll reschedule.’”
Fayetteville hopes the grant program will reduce crime. Cumberland County has seen a 45% decrease in criminal offenses since 2015, data shows. But the Fayetteville Police Department saw a 68% increase in homicides between January and September this year compared to the same period last year: 34, up from 19.
Neighboring Robeson County had one of the highest overall crime rates in the state last year, according to state data.
“When I look around my community, there are more people, more men, who have issues with their background than not,” said Jelissa Thomas, who lives in Raeford.
Jelissa Thomas still remembers when a judge at this year’s Future Rich Aunties Business Summit & Pitch Competition in Fayetteville asked her, “Why would I let a criminal move me?”
“To me, as long as we keep providing great service to the people that do give us a chance to move them, that is how we combat that stigma of people that have [criminal] backgrounds or that are in recovery,” Jelissa Thomas said.
She also said she thoroughly screens employees and said the state has an insurance program for companies that employ workers with criminal histories.
Jelissa Thomas said she ultimately hopes to open an addiction recovery center that would steer participants into jobs at D3 Delivery. Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers, or TROSA, operates a similar program in Durham and Winston-Salem.
“My goal—my very huge goal—is for it to become a model for recovery and reentry,” she said.
