MikeKnezovich After more than 38 years, Knezovich retires from Little Mike’s Trucking and beer-hauling for K&Z Distributing


BY TODD TRAUB Contributing Writer


Everybody has to come from somewhere. And so semi-retired beer hauler Mike


Knezovich shares his hometown of Hibbing, Minn., with former pro basketball player Kevin McHale and a fairly well-known singer named Robert Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan. “I saw his first performance


in our high school when he was in high school,” said Knezovich, who witnessed Dylan’s early performance as a 13-year-old watching a school talent show and says Dylan, three years older, lived five blocks from the Knezovich home in the ethnic melting pot that was Hibbing. Dylan tales are among the many


stories Knezovich has collected during his 70 years, a great deal of them spent hauling some of the country’s most iconic beers between Lincoln and Milwaukee. “I can’t write a song but Bob Dylan can’t


drive a beer truck,” said Knezovich, whose personality and eye-catching trucks made him well known on his 1,100-mile, round- trip route. Knezovich, owner of Little Mike’s Trucking, spent more than 38 years hauling Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life for K&Z Distributing, the business his brother Milan “Babe” Knezovich owns in Lincoln. Tese days Knezovich describes himself as semi-retired and has reduced his “fleet” of four trucks to one, though he still plans to drive once a week. “It’s whatever we can put together,”


Knezovich said. Knezovich’s dad, 6-1, 280-pound “Big


Mike” Knezovich, hauled beer from the end of prohibition pretty much until he rolled his favorite 1945 Mack in an accident in 1966. Little Mike, who had been driving for his dad’s furniture business and helped him haul beer since he was 14, took over his dad’s route for him and kept it when he went out on his own in 1968.


“It was fun to go down the road with your


chest puffed out and people admired your equipment,” Knezovich said. Knezovich-hauled beers have since


diminished, put of business or bought up by the major breweries that dominate the national market today. In the days when a truck would take beer one way and return with cases full of returnable empties, Knezovich hauled Schlitz, Blatz, Schmidt, Grain Belt and Hamm’s, whose mascot was a cartoon bear. “Hell, I wore the bear suit one


brother Milan “Babe” Knezovich in front of High Life Express III


Mike Knezovich (right) with his Knezovich sold his truck and bought a


bar in Hibbing in 1972, but in 1976 “Babe” Knezovich convinced his little brother to come to Lincoln and haul for his distributorship there. Knezovich kept the same Lincoln-to-


Milwaukee route for 38 years and became a fixture along the way. Gas station owners, Iowa state troopers, brewery managers and loading dock guys all got to know Knezovich, recognizing him by his chrome bedecked, 1981 Kenworth. “It would make you feel like a father figure,


guys would walk up and look at it,” Knezovich said. His one-time fleet of four consisted of the Pabst Blue Ribbon Express and the High Life Expresses I, II and III. All the trailers were rolling works of art fancily painted in the appropriate beer brand colors with the proper logos.


time in a parade,” Knezovich said. “I tell you what, you got to have a six-pack in your belly before you get in that suit.” Knezovich mourns the passing of the regional beer dominance


— the craft beer movement, with each establishment brewing its own brand, isn’t quite the same — and chalks it up to business. “It’s down to whoever owns the labels,” he


said. “It’s all subcontracted through a brewery.” Business is also partially to blame for


Knezovich’s semi-retirement, to the point that he jokes that he threatened to beat his sons if they ever got in the trucking business. Te cost of fuel and the expense of new trucks and new technologies, combined with the cost of adhering to new regulations, have changed the transportation industry since the days when Knezovich paid 18 cents a gallon for diesel. But the comfortable predictability and


familiar faces of his route and the freedom of the road, there is no putting a cost on that. “It made it a nice life,” Knezovich said. “I


wasn’t going to an office, I wasn’t sitting at a desk. I had a sense of independence.” NT


NEBRASKA TRUCKER — ISSUE 1, 2015 — www.nebtrucking.com 9


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