An accident involving a tractor-trailer rig left a rural Cromwell man dead at his farm and business Monday morning.
Nellis D. Kunce, 87, was helping unload the rig’s trailer at 11203 W 75 S when he got too close to the rear wheels while the truck was being moved. Just after 10 a.m., he was run over by the trailer’s wheels and died at the scene, according to the Noble County Sheriff’s Department.
Kunce was the owner and founder of Kunce Bros. – a fertilizer, farming, trucking and grain elevator business. Described by his son as one of the “old-timers, who were all work and no play,” Kunce once said that if he quit his business he’d die.
“He was involved in the business right up to the end,” said his son, Rodger Kunce, 65. “He worked all his life. That’s all he knew.”
In fact, his son said, Kunce drove a rig for the business up until about two years ago. The morning he died, Nellis Kunce had a spreader full of fertilizer attached to a pickup truck, all ready for him to drive to a customer.
“He went out working,” his son said.
Nellis Kunce is also survived by his other son, Doug Kunce, and his wife, Rosetta Kunce, 84, Rodger Kunce said.
