I just posted this question on the Classic Trains forum, but I’ll put it here, too.
Does anyone have any info on when and where the term “Milk Run” was first used? I have a friend who maintains that a reporter for the Washington Star newspaper coined the term sometime in the early twentieth century, but I doubt the accuracy of his statement.
See my reply in the Classic Trains site.
Pretty obvious where it originates and the term is still in use today, when there were trains a while back, they used to stop at every station to pick up milk and cream to deliver to larger centers for processing, as you can see the stopping and starting at every little burg didn’t make for very good speed, hence the name. Airlines still use the term for a multi-stop route.
As you say, the meaning of the term is fairly obvious, but if you read my question again, I was asking if anyone knows where and when the term originated.
It’s almost like asking where the term “passenger train” originated, I suspect–just a description of what was happening.
As for location, I’d suspect northern New England–it was railroads like Boston & Maine and Rutland that had milk cars into surprisingly recent times.
My money would go on the milk run term coming into vogue long before railroads reached the Pacific northwest. Lots of eastern railroads had milk runs before tracks even reached the Mississippi River.