Perpetual Motion

For Steve Kohnen, seeing project through to completion is just a beginning.

By Ron Hyink

It took just $7 for Clarence “Steve” Kohnen to get started in the precast concrete industry. At the time, he didn’t know he was going into the business – he just needed a wheelbarrow for mixing concrete to complete a home project. So he went to an auto salvage yard and took some sheet metal from a car rooftop to form the barrow part, and he already had the wheel. He then added a bed frame for the handles and chassis, mixed up some concrete and voila! – he was a precaster.

Well, not right away. First he had to complete his home project: making some concrete pipe to drain a ditch in his front yard. Using his carpentry skills from his years as a contractor, he built a wooden form to cast the pipe, then set it and backfilled it all by himself. The job caught the fancy of a friend, who subsequently asked him to do the same for his ditch. One thing led to another, and pretty soon Steve bought a one-bag mixer and starting making concrete products out of his garage.

It wasn’t long before he acquired some factory-made steel forms to increase both quantity and quality. That’s when he became a true precaster. And that’s how he developed his business – a little at a time – and became the predominant employer in the parts surrounding Germantown, Ill.

Those humble beginnings started in 1952. Today Kohnen Concrete Products manufactures primarily septic tanks, manhole risers and well casings, a venture that accompanies Steve’s water well business that he started early on in his precast business.

That’s the kind of guy Steve Kohnen is, an investor and innovator – someone who sees the value in something and brings it to life. For example, in 1959 he complained that there was nowhere in town to buy a cup of coffee and decided to build a restaurant himself. Despite all the friends and business associates who said it would never fly in Germantown, he bought some land, built the restaurant and leased it out for 25 years before he finally sold it. As a contractor, he also built several homes and a few businesses in the local area. Plus he owns a housing subdivision, a trailer park and various other businesses, most of which he built himself.

Now semi-retired, Steve serves as the company’s chairman of the board. Somewhere along the way, his daughter Jan, a former nurse, and her husband, Greg Wilburn, joined in to help run the company. Jan now exacts her administrative expertise while Greg serves as president, with their son Kevin heading up the estimating division. It’s truly a family-run business, and it all started with the seed of innovation that has carried the company through 51 years in the precast industry.

Innovation has always carried Steve to new levels, and at least a part of that innovation came from networking with other precasters through his long-time membership in the National Precast Concrete Association. Attendance at the annual trade shows brought new ideas and new endeavors. “You go to get ideas and more things you can do,” said Steve. “That’s why I went – to snoop around.” He has since ventured into producing steps, parking curbs, landscaping items, livestock feeders and other precast products in the huge, ultra-clean buildings that he – you guessed it – built himself.

Steve Kohnen would likely have you believe that he’s a simple man who has led a simple life. In fact he makes light of the things that shaped his world, sharing an ironic twist of fate here and a comical anecdote there. But few of us have all of those qualities – the wisdom, the fortitude, the drive and the determination – to start something where practically nothing existed, turn it upside down and inside out, breathe meaningful life into it and watch it grow.