68 BAVARIAN TRUCKING COMPANY
Bavarian Brewing Company offices, Covington, ca. 1911.
years, the two companies fought for the local Covington beer market. Finally, Bavarian was able to purchase Heidelberg in 1949, and Bavarian used Heidelberg’s W. Fourth St. facility in Covington as plant two for its operations until 1955, when production was consolidated on 12th St. and the former Heidelberg building was sold to C. Rice Packing (see Meatpacking). Between 1945 and 1952, employees at the Bavarian brewery worked 24 hours each day, seven days each week, to keep up with the demand for the company’s products: Bavarian, Bavarian Bock, Bavarian’s Old Style, Schott’s Ale, and, for the Florida market, Silver Bar. The company employed 200 and had a $1.7 million payroll under company president William R. Schott, Riedlin’s son-in-law. In the mid-1950s, the plight that plagued brewers who did not, for whatever reason, go national, began to beset both the Bavarian and the Wiedemann breweries. All the local advertising and the Nordic beauty of Bavarian Girl Brenda Cotter could not compete with the national television promotions of rival brewers Budweiser and Miller. International Breweries of Buffalo, N.Y., purchased the Bavarian Brewing Company in 1959. In 1962 Bavarian won first prize in a taste test at the Brussels Beer Festival in Belgium. However, the market decline could not be stopped, and by 1965 the company was losing about $1,400 each day. The company was closed, and the Bavarian brand was licensed to the Associated Brewery of Detroit, Mich. The plant’s equipment was auctioned off to a Tampa, Fla., concern, and the building was sold to Justin Schneider, who moved his Central Sales general merchandise store there. During the 1990s, the Party Source nightclubmicrobrewery operated in the former Bavarian building; later it was occupied by Jillian’s, a restaurant-entertainment center, which closed in 2006. In 2008, Bill Yung (see Columbia Sussex Corporation) purchased the property.
Holian, Timothy J. Over the Barrel: The Brewing History and Beer Culture of Cincinnati, 1800 to the Present. 2 vols. St. Joseph, Mo.: Sudhaus Press, 2000. Reis, Jim. “Even Prohibition Didn’t Stop Bavarian Brewmaster Family,” KP, August 16, 1999, 4K. ———. “Memory of Bavarian Beer Fades: Brew Was Popular for Some 100 Years,” KP, August 25, 1986, 4K. ———. “Turning Barley into Big Bucks,” KP, October 20, 2003, 5K. Wimberg, Robert J. Cincinnati Breweries. Cincinnati: Ohio Book Store, 1989.
BAVARIAN TRUCKING COMPANY. The Bavarian Trucking Company Inc., founded by Lawrence Brueggemann and incorporated in 1934, developed from a horse dray-line that was established by Lawrence’s father, Ben Brueggemann, in 1901. The dray-line eventually became known as the Brueggemann Trucking Company. When Ben died of influenza during the epidemic of 1917, he left the business to his wife, Mary Ann, and their 11 young children. Lawrence was the oldest of the children and, although only 16 years of age, the head teamster in the ongoing transport of 40-foot lathes from a Covington manufacturing concern to the city’s rail depot. Lawrence Brueggemann managed the family business for his mother until the 1930s, when he founded his own separate business, the Lawrence Brueggemann Trucking Company. He nevertheless maintained a close relationship with his siblings, who continued the Brueggemann Trucking Company into the 1970s. The Great Depression of the 1930s was hard on Lawrence’s company, and after a significant account defaulted on its payment, he was counseled to fi le bankruptcy. He rejected the suggestion and insisted on repaying all of his debts. Brueggemann sold all but the oldest of his trucks in the fleet and continued to serve his Covington clients. He made up for his shortage of equipment by expanding his ser vices to offer
the mining, hauling, and sale of sand; he also added a repair garage and a truck-parts business. His operation was housed in part of the old Bavarian Brewery complex on Pike St. in Covington. Brueggemann used its name when he incorporated as the Bavarian Trucking Company Inc. in 1934. During the 1950s the Bavarian Trucking Company expanded its excavating and hauling ser vices and began providing residential and industrial waste disposal. In 1969 the company was rechartered and Bernard Brueggemann became president, although Lawrence continued to work at the company until his death in 1989. Bernard governed the company until 1998, when he passed control to his son James. In 2003 the Bavarian Trucking Company became the first refuse hauler in Kentucky to generate electricity from methane gas created by the waste in its landfi ll. The electricity is produced from landfi ll gas in a generating plant owned by East Kentucky Power that is located at the trucking company’s facility in Boone Co. A form of green power, the electricity is marketed as EnviroWatts by the Owen Electric Cooperative. In 1999 and 2000, Waste Age and Waste News both ranked the Bavarian Trucking Company among the top 100 waste companies in the United States and Canada. In 2004 the University of Cincinnati’s Goering Center for Family and Private Business in Ohio selected the company as a finalist in the 2004 Tri-State Family Business of the Year competition. “Garbage Goes Green at Bavarian,” SC, September 18, 2005, 2A. “Landfi ll May Recover Gas,” KE, March 25, 2001, B1–B2.
Rick Brueggemann
BAWAC INC. BAWAC Community Rehabilitation Center began in March 1973 as a unit of the Northern Kentucky Mental Health–Mental Retardation Regional Board, with support and assistance from the Boone Co. Association for Retarded Citizens. The center is a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. A separate volunteer board of directors assumed responsibility for the program from the regional board in 1975. At the same time, the center moved to its present location at 7970 Kentucky Dr. in Florence, in the Northern Kentucky Industrial Park. In response to its clients’ needs, BAWAC expanded this facility in 1985 with funding from the Northern Kentucky Association for the Retarded. Another expansion in 1989 was made possible by a grant from the Kentucky Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. Through the years BAWAC has developed new programs to meet the needs of people with disabilities or barriers to employment, or both. BAWAC’s policies and goals are determined by its board, whose members represent an active crosssection of the community. The organization receives funding through fees for ser vices, ultimately paid by various state and county agencies. It is also supported by United Way and Community Chest of Greater Cincinnati; by contributions from commu-