CORBA Honors Bill Kinzeler As ‘Friend Of The River’

Bill Kinzeler’s river career started when he was 10 years old, has continued 67 years and has spanned five continents, but he’s not done yet.

Kinzeler, 77, of Hebron, Ky., was named this year’s Friend of the River by the Central Ohio River Business Association (CORBA) during the association’s winter members’ meeting February 19.

The award highlights service to the maritime industry, including throughout the Ports of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, CORBA’s historical focus, but also along the Ohio River. It serves as a “local maritime hall of fame,” CORBA Executive Director Eric Thomas said.

Thomas said Kinzeler was selected for the award for many reasons, including his lifetime career in the river business, his service as an active CORBA board member and his work on the America’s River Roots Festival.

“Of course, Bill is a class-act, a consummate professional, a dedicated family man and one of the best rivermen in the business,” Thomas added. “This recognition is long overdue.”

‘Passion’ For The River

Kinzeler said receiving the award is humbling. He has a passion for the river that developed, in part, from his father, Bill Kinzeler Sr.

“My father was a great man and a significant influence on me,” he said.

In 1958, when the younger Kinzeler was 10, his father started him as a nail carrier and “gopher” for Columbia Marine Service, which his father had founded two years earlier. The company provided shifting services for the terminals in the Cincinnati area. It also included a full-service fueling and grocery delivery business, repairs, cleaning of customer equipment and, for seven years, a salvage operation, meaning Kinzeler was introduced to many aspects of the industry quickly.

“My summers were from 7 to 3:30 five days a week working with that repair crew, baseball at night, baseball games on Saturday and rest on Sunday,” he said. “That was it.”

As Kinzeler grew, he was given more responsibility, which continued through high school and college.

He began doing fleeting and shifting work for the customers, “but then I also started mainlining and grew up on the mainlining tows,” he said. Kinzeler got his first boat at 17 and was a captain at age 20.

Following college, Kinzeler began four years of military service, but his dad insisted that he obtain his first pilot’s license while home on leave. Eleven renewals later, he said, that has proven to be good advice.

Kinzeler was assigned to an ammunition depot and port in Thailand in 1972 and 1973, while serving in the Army. That grew his view of working on the river in a different direction and stayed with him, even after his discharge in August 1974, when he went back to work for his dad’s business.

When the family closed the business in 1982, Kinzeler traveled so that he could continue working on the river. After a year and a half with Arrow Transportation Company in Sheffield, Ala., that company was bought by Merchant Grain. Kinzeler went to Paducah, Ky., for four years as general manager of Harcon Barge Company and then to American Commercial Barge Line, where he worked in management for the Louisiana Dock Company shipyard in Harahan, La. He later transferred within ACBL, serving as vice president of Gulf operations and then transferring to Jeffersonville, Ind., in 1998 to become vice president of river operations. Along the way, Kinzeler held a major role in ACBL’s expansion into South American trade.

Kinzeler retired from ACBL in May 2004, but immediately thereafter he formed his own project management and consulting company, Running Rivers LLC.

“The connections that I had in the domestic market played very well into that transition, and the relations that I’d established with South American entities that were looking to expand on the Paraguay-Paraná allowed me to work with them,” he said.

Kinzeler and the dedicated team of professionals with whom he worked eventually delivered 640 barges and 26 towboats to the Paraguay-Paraná system.

At Running Rivers, Kinzeler also had the opportunity to work on other international projects, including in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some key projects included the safe delivery of 36 barges, two 4,300 hp. towboats and a 200-foot drydock in a single load from New Orleans to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and working with port authorities in Europe and with Kongsberg in Norway, which developed the second generation of navigation simulators, eventually brought to the Seamen’s Church Institute’s Centers for Maritime Education in the United States in the 2000s.

In Africa, Kinzeler was part of plans for harnessing the Zambezi River, which runs from Victoria Falls to the Indian Ocean. He described seeing hippopotami “looking like islands” and crocodiles lining the riverbanks.

“To be there and see an entirely different culture is absolutely amazing,” Kinzeler said.

He said he could never have done all of this without the support of Kathy, his bride of 56 years. Together, the couple have four grandchildren and 14 grandchildren.

“One of the things I tell my kids is ‘Don’t be afraid to say yes,’” Kinzeler said. “Don’t get so comfortable that you don’t look at something outside your comfort zone.”

Kinzeler closed Running Rivers in December, but he said he is retired “in name only.” He continues occasional consulting work, does trip work to maintain his license and volunteers with CORBA, where he has spent the past 12 years as treasurer.

Kinzeler was also part of a key group of individuals tapped by the state of Ohio to help in forming the Ohio River Commission last year. Additionally, he and Alan Bernstein of BB Riverboats were the co-directors of river operations for the America’s River Roots Festival, which brought nine riverboats and more than 40 vintage pleasure craft from across the country to the Cincinnati area last October for boat races, boat parades and 158 passenger cruises involving roughly 51,000 people.

“My role was to coordinate all the boat activities with the events that were occurring over those five days,” he said.

That included logistics planning, from setting up a public landing for the boats to ensuring adequate mooring, coordinating high water and emergency plans and working with the Coast Guard to realign the channel for recreational traffic during the event.

Kinzeler is quick to deflect praise, however.

“I was surrounded by people who knew how to get this thing done,” he said. “All I did was give them a map to follow.”

Honoring A Mentor

Doug Ruschman, past CORBA board chairman, presented Kinzeler with the award. He said it was a true honor to present the award to a man he has known for 30 years, back to both of their days working for ACBL.

“I’ve looked up to him and respected him for so long because of his teaching and sharing with people his knowledge of the people and the industry,” he said.

Ruschman said he was one of those people who benefitted from Kinzeler’s teaching. He had just come from a position with CSX Transportation, which owned ACBL at the time, when he was put into a position managing ACBL’s Harahan, La., shipyard.

“I didn’t know anything about barging or towboating,” he said. “I met Bill down in Harahan, and he walked me through everything. He showed me so many things about the industry.”

Kinzeler knows the whole river system and how it works and is willing to share that knowledge with others, Ruschman said. He added that he “has just done a wonderful job” in taking care of business matters for CORBA, all while attending business meetings throughout the country and helping to make sure the groups work together and build on each other’s successes.

Kinzeler is also known as a devoted family man who has close relationships with his children and grandchildren, some of whom have followed him into the industry.

Kinzeler’s son, Bill Kinzeler III, works with Ingram Barge Company in infrastructure and logistics. Grandson Bill Kinzeler IV, known as Will, also works for Ingram. Additionally, Kinzeler’s brother, Sam, owns his own towing company in Mobile, Ala.

“We’ve been on the system almost 80 years,” Kinzeler said of the family.

With so much time in the industry, some people might be thinking about retiring from it permanently. Kinzeler said that while he has tried to slow down a bit and stepped away from some roles, such as chairman of CORBA’s annual golf fundraiser, he finds it difficult to step away entirely. On a recent morning, he said, he received three phone calls, asking about consulting on river business matters.

He sees his role now as one of the river system’s biggest boosters.

“I’m there to champion whatever we can do to make this river system more vital and inclusive,” Kinzeler said. “This is a big river that’s got a lot of room in it, and we need to understand how it has changed in the last 50 years and the importance not only to the commercial side but also to the recreational side and the economic side.”

In the end, Kinzeler said, “I don’t do this for the accolades. I do it because I love it.”

Featured image caption: Bill Kinzeler at 16 and Bill Kinzeler now.