Speaking Of Milk Trucks, A Local Dairy Near Me That Had Been In Business For Almost 100 Years Recently Closed. They Had Trouble Competing With Wal-Mart And Save-A-Lot, Companies With A Much Larger Market.
One of the last thing some wacko group did to kick them in the rear-end and make their decision to close was to go after them for Night-Time Sky Pollution because they illuminated the Dairy’s name on their small retail business located in the middle of nowhere.
The clown who was the leader of the protest is one of my township board members. Our local paper (the one that urges people to “shop local” [locally, please!] ) ran a photo of her receiving an award for the fine job she did in ending this terrible light pollution.
I remember the milk man, and the bread man, though I don’t recall that they stood up driving.
The milk man from one local dairy also delivered the butter, sour cream and anything else that would be dairy related. The bread man sold cakes, doughnuts, and other bakery related items.
Not only did the dairy’s provide the milk boxes, but many people in Wisconsin built them into the wall of the kitchen with one door on the outside and one inside. I think this provided a cool place in the colder weather to store the milk, instead of running into the cellar every time.
I remember the ice cream truck the most, but where we lived…he only swung by on a rare occasion.
We also had a big farm that raised peas down the road. We’d all sit on the corner by the stop sign and wait for the trucks to stop, as we’d reach up and pull down a few pea vines while he waited patiently.
We must have pooped green for a week.
My wife bought some of that meat from a traveling meat seller, but the stuff was like chewing on an old pony.
Back in the days of home delivery most families only had one car and small refrigerators. It made sense to have home delivery in bottles or small cartons on a daily basis then. I remember the farmer down the road surprised his wife with “large” 12 cu ft. GE refrigerator with “automatic defrost”. That’s different from “frost free”. That was the largest household model at the time. It would not have held gallon jugs of milk.
Most farmers have always had freezers to store harvested vegetables and home made pies. My sister in law has two 24 cubic foot freezers; she grows all her own food.
I was raised on a farm, so milk availability was a non-issue. Many towns also had restaurants called “dairy bars” which served wholesome home cooked meals but no alcoholic beverages.
I’m sure some of you old timers remember the Broadway song “Good Night baby, Good Night, the Milkman’s on his way”
The campus housing for married students where my first wife and I lived was probably built in the mid 1950s. Each apartment had a little compartment with a door on the hallway side and on the kitchen side of each apartment. The walls were concrete block and these compartments were for milk delivery. The compartments were just wide enough for a couple of gallons of milk. By the time. I was a resident in 1969, milk delivery had stopped. Unfortunately, some residents in the building would open the inside and hallway door to the milk compartment to vent the kitchen and the cooking odors in the hallways were overpowering. However, our one bedroom apartment was only $90 a month including all utilities except phone. Our assistantship stipends covered our living expenses.
@ok4450 Yeah, I think I instinctively knew those guys were “BS artists”, but I was thinking from more of a food safety point of view, which you pointed out “give that spoiled meat to -----”
Somehow people think they’re saving money when something is out of context. For example, my Mom told me about when she worked tending bar in the 60’s - 70’s, a guy would often come around selling packs of work socks, longjohns, that kind of thing. The implication was that the stuff was “hot” i.e. stolen, and all the guys in the bar would load up. Truth was, when Montgomery Ward’s would have a sale, he’d go around to every store in town and buy as many as they would sell him, then go around the bars selling them for double. But guys thought it was stolen so they thought it was a good deal. Of course back in those days many men didn’t shop for their own clothes, they turned their pay over to their wives, who did the shopping, so they didn’t know what stuff like socks were supposed to cost in the first place.
@Yosemite “. . . the stuff was like chewing on an old pony.” That’s hilarious!
I remember having a milkman as a kid. The one in Vermont left the milk on the front porch but the one in California actually came in to the house and put it in the refrigerator. The back door was always unlocked for him. When people started feeling unsafe in their homes, they started locking all the doors at night and when away, that could have had a little to do with the demise of milk delivery.
As to whether the stood or sat while driving, who knew. They came around at like 4 AM.
Back in the 1940s and 1950s, our community of 60,000 had three dairies, and each dairy had a home milk delivery. Now there are no local dairies. The milk is either under the store label or is from an out of town delivery. We also had home bread delivery from a bakery called Omar. That bakery with its home delivery has been gone for about 50 years.
All this discussion of home milk delivery has caused me another Geezeritis attack. I best go take another dose of Geritol®.
Interesting comments all, thanks for posting. The reason I got to thinking about the milk truck driver standing up is b/c I’m just now watching that HBO special “From the Earth to the Moon”. And they say the pilots of the lunar lander vehicle (LEM) had to stand up, just like the Milk truck driver. It was an engineering idea to reduce the area needed for LEM windows. I guess windows for space use weigh a lot. If the pilots stood up the engineers discovered the pilots could see where they were going better than sitting down, so didn’t need as much window space.
I remember it very well. The bottles had cardboard “pogs” to seal them, and on the side of each bottle was painted in red “We came to visit, not to stay. Please return us every day”. I don’t remember the name of the creamery.
Everybody’s right about the standing to drive method of servicing numerous short stops, short little drives, and lots of interior movement.
Back in that day when they really did stop at almost every house…including mine, as a kid.
I won a radio contest once and recieved TEN gallons of ice cream ! WOW, for a 12 year old this is an amazing prize. Instead of trying to deliver it all at once, the milkman made me a punch card to be able to dole them out a 1/2 gallon ( remember those ) at a time.
YES there really WAS such a thing as ‘‘personal service’’.
When I was a kid, I lived in suburbia and the milkman was long gone. But I’d admit that unpasteurized milk, cider, etc. may save some lives. (I think it was TB that was the main reason) But the pasteurized stuff just doesn’t taste as good, that’s for sure. Pasteurized cider always tastes more bitter and lacks the crisp sweetness of the untouched product. So it goes.
Just as others have stated. It provides rapid entry and exit of the vehicle. The frames had a section that was cutout and lowered to aid in the function of the vehicle and the driver.
Divco was the major player in milk trucks but International Harvester as well as others joined in the fun.
We had two or three dairies then competing with each other. The milk boxes had their names on them to advertise. I think the milk men around us were almost entirely commission sales though. I know they would spend afternoon knocking on doors trying to add more people to their route or get them to change dairies.
Back in the late 50’s I used to help my dad on Saturday mornings with grocery deliveries. It was a Saturday job for him. So we’d load up the 4 WD Jeep with wooden crates of groceries from orders filled by the local SuperValue and hit the trail. I know some of the customers were shut ins but some were not, but it was my first look at the insides of some houses that I wouldn’t have wanted to stay in. Actually I can still smell the inside of the Jeep with the wooden crates. I really couldn’[t say if there were also deliveries during the week. There might have been since the guy that owned the delivery service had several Jeeps that he would have needed to keep busy. The guy’s name was Roy and it was a Jeep and he kind of looked like Roy Rogers and I was young enough to kinda think there was a connection. Never wore my guns though delivering.
When I was at the dealership, several years back, a lady would come buy selling socks. The prices weren’t that good, and the socks didn’t look to be particularly high quality. And they certainly weren’t the right kind of socks, to be worn with heavy steel toed work boots
I never bought any socks from her
But some of the other guys did. I asked them why. They felt the woman was probably poor, and selling socks was her way of eking out a living. I don’t know if that was true or not. In any case, the lady was very average looking. Not pretty, not ugly, just average. So looks were not a factor . . . unlike those hot ladies who come by, trying to sell you WORTHLESS supplemental insurance, for accidents, illness, etc. There are so many exceptions and fine print, nobody ever gets paid out
There was also a guy selling work belts . . . the kind that don’t have an exposed metal buckle. The guys that wore regular belts would all eventually learn the lesson, when their exposed metal belt buckle REALLY messed up a customer’s fender
I bought a belt from that guy once. It was the same price as a belt from the snap-on tool vendor. And it didn’t even last as long
There was a guy who came buy and sold Knapp work boots. But he came by in a car, and didn’t actually have them in the car. The idea was you order them, and he’d come by to deliver them. Seemed like a silly idea to me, considering I could drive to the Knapp store, and leave with a pair of boots. Why am I ordering a pair of boots, without even trying them on first . . . ?!
Just to clarify…my grandmother bought the meat from a local butcher through a neighborhood club. The club bought several cows and pigs and then had the butcher slaughter and cut them up into useable portions that would fit into the chest freezers of that era. I would never buy meat from a truck.
The reason I got to thinking about the milk truck driver standing up is b/c I'm just now watching that HBO special "From the Earth to the Moon"
Great show. Tom Hanks wanted to that after he did Apollo-13.
.my grandmother bought the meat from a local butcher through a neighborhood club. The club bought several cows and pigs and then had the butcher slaughter and cut them up into useable portions that would fit into the chest freezers of that era.
You can still do that today…but it’s usually through the farmer. It really brings the cost of the meat down…but you have to buy a lot of it to make it worth it…this a very large freezer.
Back to the original question. Before there were milk trucks, there were milk wagons that were horse drawn. The delivery drivers never sat down because the horse knew the route and where the stops were along the way. As the horse walked along the driver just took the items needed from the wagon and made those house to house deliveries.
When horse poop pollution got to be a concern, and the feeding, housing, and care for the horses was more than the price of gas the dairy’s and bread companies moved to gas powered trucks. The driver’s didn’t like them much because the trucks couldn’t drive themselves. But the trucks were designed so the driver’s could at least drive them standing up which was their custom.
The horse delivery system was much more efficient and the drivers were paid on commission so the drivers were sad to see the horses go. The gas trucks slowed the drivers down.
My grandfather was the foreman for the drivers for Friehouffer bakery in Troy, NY. One day circa 1955 I was allowed to ride along one day on a route that was still handled by a horse pulled bread wagon. Most of the streets were still brick paved and the horses made a very distinctive clopping sound as they moved down the street. Not too long after that all the horses were gone from the streets. Troy may have been one of the last places in the US where horses were used in this way.
