What Truck Did Cities Service Use For Farm Delivery In The 50s

Spending

Remember the Milkman? In Some Places, He'due south Back

A milkman made home deliveries recently in Keedysville and Hagerstown, Md.

Credit... Steve Ruark for The New York Times

Dec. 16, 2007

STEPHANIE MONAHAN fondly recalls having milk delivered to her front end door by the local milkman when she was a young girl growing upwards on the outskirts of Boston. So, a few months ago, when she saw an old-fashioned milk truck chugging up the colina of her new neighborhood in Milton, Mass., she chased subsequently it to find out if information technology fabricated home deliveries.

"Certain plenty, they did. I was so happy," Mrs. Monahan said.

Now a company called Thatcher Farm delivers three half-gallons of milk in glass bottles, along with other dairy products, to her home each calendar week. She estimates that she pays about 50 cents a bottle more than for the convenience of not having to go to the supermarket.

"I've got a 17-year-old son at domicile and he drinks a lot of milk; we all do," she said.

There was an added benefit for Mrs. Monahan. "I'm a 55-year-onetime boomer and it's squeamish to have someone else lugging those milk bottles around. Those big containers you lot get from the store are very heavy," she said. With home delivery, she takes them from an insulated milk box next to the dorsum door.

Dwelling house milk delivery from local dairies and creameries was a mainstay for many families in the 1950s and '60s. Simply as information technology became easier and cheaper to purchase milk at the grocery store, and equally processes were developed to extend milk'southward shelf life, the milkman began to fade into the past.

The earliest survey from the Department of Agriculture on home milk commitment was in 1963, when almost 29.7 per centum of consumers had milk delivered. By 1975, the number had dropped to six.9 percent of total sales, and by 2005, the most recent year for which figures were available, to just 0.4 percent.

Now the milkman appears to exist making a comeback, thanks to people like Mrs. Monahan. In addition to affectionate the convenience, consumers like to buy a fresh, local product.

Norm Monsen, a consultant for the Wisconsin Department of Agronomics, Trade and Consumer Protection, says a milkman renaissance is starting to take shape in many parts of the land. Consumers, he said, are increasingly willing to pay the $two typical premium for a gallon of home-delivered milk over the shop-bought diverseness.

"I would say, seven years ago, there was fiddling to no home delivery of milk going on in Wisconsin. At present we take about 5 companies doing that," he said. "And that'south a big deal because we don't accept a huge population in Wisconsin. I've seen information technology growing throughout the Midwest."

For Oberweis Dairy in North Aurora, Ill., home commitment customers have increased to xl,000 from 10,000 in 1997.

"A component of it is the nostalgia and the quality of milk the home dairies offering," said Bob Renaut, president and principal executive of Oberweis.

Information technology was the quality and convenience that persuaded Nancy Tait, of Naperville, Ill., to beginning home delivery for her family. "I had been buying milk from the supermarket and I got a hanger advertizement on my door and some phone marketing calls about home delivery from Oberweis. I thought, 'Permit'due south give it a try.' "

Prototype

Credit... Steve Ruark for The New York Times

Ms. Tait said that while she was growing up, her family always had home delivery. In fact, she nevertheless remembers the milkman's name: Fred.

"The concept wasn't a foreign thing to me," she said. "I only didn't know they did it anymore."

Now she's friends with Ed, her Oberweis milkman. "For the holidays I go out him cookies," she said. "On Halloween, I left him a bag of candy with a thank-yous note."

The process is simple. The milkman puts the milk in a cooler near the front end door once a week, and Ms. Tait puts the empty milk bottles out the nighttime before the deliveries and he takes them away.

Oberweis washes, inspects and refills the bottles, Mr. Renaut said.

It's pretty much the way information technology was a one-half-century agone. The only modify is that many customers can now place their orders on the Net. "If I go away or on vacation, I but get online and abolish or change the order date," Ms. Tait added.

At the South Mountain Creamery in Middletown, Physician., demand for home milk delivery is so high that the company has a waiting list of about 350 families in Maryland, northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., said Tony Brusco, the director.

The creamery started delivering milk from the back of a Ford Explorer in 2001, he said, and now has seven milk trucks and 2,000 customers. "Nosotros haven't advertised," he added. "Nosotros just accept grown with word of mouth."

The customer base of Thatcher Farm, where Mrs. Monahan gets her milk, has grown by a third in two years, to ii,000, said Joe Manning, co-owner of the company.

Nigh 45 years ago, Thatcher had its own cows and distributed its own milk, but today it is mainly a distributor, getting the actual product from a nearby dairy.

"We got rid of our last moo-cow in 1962," Mr. Manning said.

In many cases, small dairy farms work with local distributors to deliver their milk to local consumers.

Catamount Farm, a small dairy distributor based in Barnstead, N.H., gets its milk from two local farms and makes well-nigh 300 abode deliveries a week, said Ron Panneton, Catamount's possessor. The company charges $3.25 for a half-gallon of milk and has a $2 weekly delivery accuse.

He said he and his wife started the business in 2002 and accept had a consistent 35 percentage sales growth rate each year. "We started home delivery after 9/xi because we saw people pulling everything in dorsum close — not traveling as much, non wanting products from far abroad," explained Mr. Panneton, a erstwhile carpenter. "The thought was to bring back the milkman. People really responded to that."

When they started, they didn't look milk deliveries to become a full-time business organisation. "We were more often than not doing beekeeping and selling bee products," Mr. Panneton said, but within a year they realized that "information technology just keeps growing,"

A majority of milk delivery workers are still men. Merely Mr. Panneton's wife, Robin, also makes deliveries forth with himself and three staff members. And so "milk person" may be a more appropriate name today, he said.