MEMBER SPOTLIGHT Ed Shada Great Western Bank Shada


By todd tRauB Contributing Writer


For 10 cents, Ed Shada once ran out on his


father. But, Shada, jokingly admits, his father was


probably glad it happened. Shada, 57, is in his third year as head of the


equipment finance division at Great Western Bank. It’s a job that combines Shada’s passion for crunching numbers and his lifelong love for trucking and transportation that began when he worked for his family’s transport business in Omaha. Shada’s grandfather started the business


hauling farmers’ fruit and vegetables from Kearney to market in Omaha. His father, Ed Sr., entered the business in the 1960s and Shada recalls learning to drive a 3-speed International Scout with the shift on the column and doing oil changes and other minor maintenance for his Dad at the rate of $1.15 an hour. Except by Shada’s admission he wasn’t


really very good at the mechanical side of things. “I’ll tell you if there was any kid about to be


fired by his Dad it was me,” Shada said. Before that could happen Shada moved to


a different company, taking a job repairing and changing tires for a $1.25 an hour. “For a dime I abandoned my Dad,” Shada


said. “But I think he subsidized that dime to be honest with you.” However Shada, now living in Council


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Bluffs, Iowa, never lost his respect for the work done by his late father or his grandfather, who lost his business in the 1980s and then rebuilt it. And Shada is pleased his career path has put him back in the transportation realm. “Transportation made sense,” Shada said. Shada is proud that, to this day, he has


family in transportation. His brother John works dispatch for Werner Enterprises and his son Alex, 24, is a fourth-generation member of the industry working in driver recruitment for Hill Bros. Transportation. While not the world’s greatest mechanic,


Shada always had a head for numbers and graduated Creighton University with a degree in mathematics and went to graduate school at Northern Arizona University. He worked in oil exploration after graduate


school and then moved into finance, working for Fortune 500 east of the Mississippi and financing large projects for people like Saturn, Dow Chemical Company, Marriott Corporation, Illinois Central Gulf Railroad and Diebold. Shada raised $40 million to launch a


pioneering, online equipment financing marketplace out of San Francisco, but after divorcing he wanted a better environment for his son and bought a house in Omaha across the street from his parents. He launched some projects for consultant


SilverStone Group, then managed local and national business development for Bellevue University before taking a pause from working


to simply spend more time with his son. “Nothing like being a single father,” Shada


said. When Great Western needed someone to


take over its equipment finance group, Shada was glad to get back in the game. “Tey had the right people in place,” he


said. “Tey had the right products. Tey had a good name.” Shada can recall the independent owner life


of his grandfather and the 2 a.m. phone calls to come pick up a truck in Denver. He remembers catching rides with company drivers to and from graduate school. “You know what they’re going through,”


Shada said of the trucking families. Shada reminisced about his grandfather


losing everything in the de-regulation years of the 1980s only to build his fleet back up to 26 tractors before retiring. All of these experiences, and more, plus his


experience in starting his own enterprise and coming up with his own innovations, made him the right man for his current job, said Shada, who even returned calls and helped clients while on a recent vacation in Ireland. “I think I add a dimension that others don’t


have in this business,” Shada said. “Tere’s knowing the value of the equipment, how people operate. … It’s a very entrepreneurial bank I work for and you have to be creative. Tese are great, hard-working people.” Nt


NEBRASKA TRUCKER — ISSUE 4, 2014 — www.nebtrucking.com


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