The year is 2012.
The place? Abingdon, Va.
Charlie Henderson, owner of Food Country USA and owner of NASCAR race team Henderson Motorsports, hasn’t fielded an entry in any of NASCAR’s three premier series since 2007.
That year, Caleb Holman ran an Xfinity Series car at the team’s home track of Bristol Motor Speedway, just over 30 miles from the team’s shop in Abingdon.
Henderson catches the racing itch once again, but this time, he wants to go NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (at that time called the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series) racing on a part-time basis. Donning the team’s signature No. 75 used in both Cup Series and Xfinity Series (then Busch Series) competition, the team brought back Holman to drive its truck.
Holman proceeded to drive the truck for the next five seasons, attempting no more than nine races per year. The team failed to qualify in its very first Truck Series attempt at Martinsville Speedway. But with Holman, it only missed two other races, both in 2016, at Charlotte Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.
With the lows of DNQing twice in 2016 came one of the team’s highlights to that point that same year. At Eldora Speedway that summer, Holman stunned the field and put his No. 75 on the pole for the race.
Unfortunately, Holman was swept up in a big crash partway through the race, but winning the pole was still a huge deal. Not just for Holman, who won his first and only career pole, but for Henderson as well.
Despite now holding the reins as the second oldest active team in NASCAR (behind Wood Brothers Racing), the team had never seen much of the front in any capacity — and to that point, all of its P1 honors came in the Xfinity Series: Three wins (one with Brad Teague in 1987, two with Rick Wilson in 1989) and seven poles.
Not only was that Henderson’s first pole since returning to NASCAR in 2012, but it was also its first pole since 1993. To date, Holman’s Eldora pole is the only Truck Series pole in team history. It was, and still is, a big deal.
Holman continued to drive for the team in 2017, but scaled back his race schedule to just two dates — spring Martinsville and Eldora. Henderson, however, expanded its schedule to 10 races, the most races it had attempted in a single Truck Series season in its history.
Who would attempt the other eight races, you ask?
Enter Parker Kligerman.
The former Penske Racing development driver joined up with Henderson when it seemed his full-time driving days were over. He brought a plethora of racing experience and even a Truck Series win to boot at Talladega in 2012. A younger driver with a relatively young team (on the Truck Series side, that is) … why not try the pairing out?
Like Holman, Kligerman also failed to qualify in his first attempt with the team, this time coming in the season opener at Daytona International Speedway. In his next six starts, however, Kligerman scored four top 10s, doubling Holman’s career total and already giving Henderson a career season in Truck Series competition.
Holman, meanwhile, ran his two races with little success, and quietly retired in September of that year to become a leader at his church. That gave the seat of Henderson’s No. 75 fully to Kligerman starting with the October race at Talladega, the site of his first career win.
There, Henderson and Kligerman shocked the field again with a P1 result — only this time it wasn’t a pole.
For the first time since 1989, Henderson Motorsports was back in victory lane, thanks to a driver who could’ve easily had his career ended had Henderson not picked him up. But thanks to Henderson, Kligerman earned his second career Truck Series win. Henderson could have shut down the team right then and there and looked back on his career as an owner with satisfaction.
But that’s not who Henderson was.
With Kligerman at the helm, Henderson pressed on with a part-time schedule in the Truck Series, hoping to replicate its success of its Talladega triumph. Instead of 28 years, it would take just five measly years for the team, still based in Abingdon, to reach Truck Series victory lane again.
This time, it came on the twists and turns of Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course — and it was no fluke by any means. Kligerman and the No. 75 team unloaded off the truck with insane speed. Kligerman qualified second, won the first stage and led a whopping 56 of the race’s 67 laps to take a dominating victory over a hard-charging Zane Smith.
In the years between 2018 and 2023, only twice did Henderson field the No. 75 in a Truck Series race with someone other than Kligerman behind the wheel.
The first was in 2021, when Sam Mayer made his first Truck Series start of 2021 on the Daytona International Speedway road course. Mayer was due to make seven Truck Series starts in 2021, but only ended up making five — however the Daytona road course was the only start Mayer made for Henderson, as his other four starts came with the now-defunct Bret Holmes Racing.
The other time was in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway in 2023, where Sean Hingorani, fresh off of winning the 2023 ARCA Menards Series West championship just hours prior, made his second career start in the Truck Series in the No. 75. It was a surprising decision to put Hingorani in the truck, as he only drove Toyotas to that point in his career and was part of the Toyota Racing Development (now Toyota Gazoo Racing) pipeline. That night at Phoenix, after winning a championship in a Venturini Motorsports Toyota, Hingorani finished a dismal 27th in a Henderson Chevrolet.
For 2024, Kligerman stepped away from Henderson to focus on what would be his final full-time season in NASCAR in the Xfinity Series with Big Machine Racing.
Taking the reins for Henderson was Stefan Parsons, who continued the part-time trend and competed in 10 races with the team.
Parsons and the team were a good pairing, as he built on the success that Kligerman brought the team. While he never reached victory lane, Parsons earned three top 10s with the team, including a career-best sixth at Daytona, and only had two finishes outside the top 20 all season.
However, Henderson was not finished racing in 2024 after Parsons’ tenure was complete, as it took advantage of the talents of the young Connor Zilisch at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Having run four races to that point with Spire Motorsports (and another still to go), Zilisch took a turn driving Henderson’s truck at the fast 1.5-mile speedway, where he finished a solid 18th.
That brings us to this year.
The 2025 season is one that Abingdon would like to forget. Kligerman returned to the team, as even though he retired from full-time racing, he still decided to continue racing part-time with Henderson. The team started off strong by earning its third (and Kligerman’s fourth) career win at Daytona, arguably the biggest win of both Kligerman’s and Henderson’s careers.
The sweet taste of victory only lasted as long as the post-race press conference, however, as Kligerman’s truck failed post-race inspection and was subsequently disqualified, giving Corey Heim the victory and placing KIigerman in last. Though unlike most teams who appeal penalties, Henderson and Kligerman remain insistent to this day that they did not have an illegal truck, and instead blamed NASCAR for improper measuring that caused the truck to fail.
Nevertheless, the team appealed and lost, and in turn lost out on its biggest victory.
But that was far from the biggest loss the team would face this season.
On June 14, team owner Charlie Henderson passed away at the age of 88. In a team statement, the team said it was “grateful for the many years of leadership, friendship and memories that Charlie gave to Henderson Motorsports and the entire NASCAR community.”
Kligerman and Parsons expressed their emotions on X following the news.
While Henderson had not planned on entering the race this Friday (June 20) at Pocono Raceway, he will be riding with Kaden Honeycutt and Niece Motorsports on the name rail of Honeycutt’s No. 45.
Henderson is the second Truck Series team owner to pass away this season, as Hattori Racing Enterprises team owner Shigeaki Hattori was tragically killed in a car accident earlier this season.
The team hasn’t made any indication that the passing of its leader will change whether or not it continues racing — it still has a part-time schedule to finish out with Kligerman and/or its newest driver Patrick Emerling, who made his debut for the team back at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Sometimes, the best way to deal with tragedy is to press on, and it appears Henderson Motorsports will do just that. With nowhere near as many resources as some of the bigger Truck Series teams, it has managed to win twice out of a shop in Abingdon, not even in NASCAR’s home base of Charlotte/Concord, N.C.
Henderson may be gone, but the team’s drive and passion for going out and competing will only increase. It knows it can win, and with its history as the second-oldest active team in NASCAR, everyone on the team knows that Henderson would want his operation to continue in his absence.
The Truck Series is absolutely the place to do it. The team has found its home in the Truck Series as a part-time operation. The foundation that Holman laid continues to be built upon by Kligerman, with help from Parsons, Emerling, Mayer, Zilisch and Hingorani along the way.
After the way Daytona turned out, even notching one more win would be like a championship for the team now. It can get there. It will reach victory lane once again. It’s only a matter of ‘when’.
‘Why’, however?
For Charlie.
Follow @AnthonyDamcott on X.
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and serves as an at-track reporter. He has also assisted with short track content and social media, among other duties he takes/has taken on for the site. In 2025, he became an official member of the National Motorsports Press Association. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight coordinator in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.