The sign on the front window read “NO RIDERS”, and I was surely old enough to read that sign, but that did not matter. Each morning when the dairy truck, an old Divco, rumbled up the hill to Grandmother’s cottage, I would go ahead and climb on to it. It had a wooden slat floor that could be removed to clean the truck, and also to prevent falls when walking inside of the truck. Milk and other dairy products were stacked in wooden crates on either side of the isle, and they were coverd with chips and chunks of ice to keep the milk cold. Melted ice underfoot was not a good thing as far as safety and footing went.
When the milkman returned to the truck, there we were seated among the milk crates, and there was nothing that he could do other than to continue up the hill making his other deliveries. He stood up to drive the truck. I guess that wound not be acceptable these days, but that is how it was done in those days, perhaps a throw back to when horses pulled the cart.
Up the hill we went, but of course it was a dead end, and so after making deliveries we had to ride back down the hill again. We alighted at Grandmother’s house, no point in riding all over the neighborhood with him, there was other mischief to be had yet this morning, and we had to turn to it, after eating a small box of frosted flakes while seated on a boulder in the front yard.
Alas, if you want to model a more modern era, you would probably find no Divco truck on your roads, although it might be fun to put one, fenced in, in a public park somewhere.
But the dairy still delivers milk, even if the truck is different. The law does not permit a third party to deliver milk to the stores. The food wholesaler cannot sell milk, the grocery company cannot distribute milk through its own warehouse, only the dairy can deliver milk. So the milk truck is still very much a part of the American
I remember the drivers who stood but I seem to recall a stool of some sort so they could sit if they wanted to.
And some of us remember when there was no skim milk or 2% milk or even homogenized milk, and regular milk would have an inch or two of pure cream at the top – when you opened the foiled paper lid that cream was spooned out for use in coffee. On cold mornings when you opened the milk chute, the foiled paper lid on the milk bottle would be pushed up an inch or two due to freezing. Folks who did not have milk chutes would sometimes find neighborhood cats (or perhaps they were lions?) licking the frozen shaft of cream that lifted off the paper cap.
In the center of the foiled paper lid on the returnable glass milk bottles was a round paper disc that had the dairy’s name printed on it. Save enough of those discs and you could go to a local place called Kiddieland that, among other rides, had a train you could ride on.
It was similar in Maine when I was growing up. Returnable glass bottles on the doorstep in the morning. If Mom wanted something extra when family was visiting, she would leave a note in the mouth of one of the empty bottles and the milkman would fill the order the next day. At school, we had small single serving size glass bottles. The paper cap had a tab that you would pry up and there was a hole in it to insert a straw. IN the winter, we had the same problem with the bottles freezing and the cream extruding out of the top.
There was also a man who delivered and sold bakery goods and bread from a local bakery in the back of a station wagon. When my wife was young, the local grocery store would take a phone order and deliver groceries to their house.
Along with modeling an old milk truck the home delivery of ice would make a nice scene if you are modeling before the 1950’s. This was the time before everyone had an electric refrigerator. In the summer we kids had time on our hands so one of the mischevious things we would do was to wait for the ice truck, it was the size of a pick up. When the driver left the truck to take ice to a house we would grab a chunk or two of ice off the back of the truck. The truck hauled both block and chipped ice. One day we noticed the driver delivering to the local hospital. The ice room was in the rear on the ground floor off of an alley.
After that find we didn’t need to wait for the ice truck any longer [:D]
In the summertime, the driver was always willing to give out free ice to any kid who wanted it. It was the hardest ice I’ve ever encountered, and it’s a miracle I never broke a tooth on it.
At school, we had the little bottles in kindergarten and first grade; but the cartons were introduced during second grade (1953-54). At first, the cartons were closed at the top with a metal staple. Later, the staple was eliminated and the top was sealed with glue. Our second grade teacher, Miss Zarling, stood in front of the class to demonstrate how easy it was to open the new cartons, and promptly cut her finger — badly — on the staple. It’s a wonder we ever got up the courage to try opening the things ourselves. By the way, nobody had ever heard of the title “Ms.” at the time.
Youngsters! [:D] Rags & Iron Man, horse drawn wagon in the alley’s. Friuits & veggie man, horse drawn wagon, on the brick streets. Milk and Ice man, also horse drawn wagon’s. Coal truck, Mack Bull dog chain drive, solid rubber tires, rumbling down the street. Street cars, running down the brick main streets and don’t forget the men in white uniforms and cap, with the brightly colored barrel on wheels, sweeping up the horsey pooh in the streets. Now those were the days, espaecially if you grew up, in a big city like Chi-Town. The trucks started appearing around 1946&7.
Don’t forget a home made scooter, with a borrowed hard wood Milk crate, a two by four and just one adjustable roller skate, take them apart nail one to the front and one on the back. The hardest part, was trying to drive a nail through the wood of that milk crate. I still hear those steel roller skate wheels, on the concrete side walks. [:)]
I see Brother Elias is right, you could drive the Divco trucks standing up. That seems pretty unsafe to us at this late date…
Ugh.
Elmhurst dairy in Jamaica, Queens still exists, with 3 axle fixed chassis reefer-body trucks for smaller stores, bodegas, gas stations and the like . I suppose for big enough institutions & retail centers tractor-trailer units are used.
I am trying to find out the style of bread delivery truck that would have been used by Levy’s Rye Bread back in the late 1970s. I think they were standard 1970s unpainted (natural aluminum or whatever) Chevy step vans, but they always had the famed “You don’t have to be Jewish ads” mounted on the side (there were many different nationalities used) which, even as a pre-teen kid ("tweener, although that phrase probably didn’t exist back then), I thought looked cool.
By the 1970s
I had a high school physics teacher who drove a Divco truck before becoming a teacher. In addition to the stand-up driving and shifting, he described popping it into neutral as you approached a stop, applying some brake (perhaps using the parking brake?) while reaching behind you to load the basket with the order for the upcoming house, and nudging the steering wheel occasionally to keep from hitting the curb. A good milkman would be out the door with the order about the time the truck stopped (said my high school teacher, who told many stories, but also, I discovered later, managed to teach a group of senior physics students the first semester of college calculus in 6 weeks. Remarkable man, he.)
I can’t say for today, but when we moved out of Colorado in 2001, we were still getting dairy delivered to the house. A very enterprising dairy marketed as both a way to save time by avoiding a trip to the store, and save money on the products you wouldn’t buy just because you were there. Their milk also seemed like a throw back in taste to a richer milk.
And I also remember going to the ice house to get ice for making ice cream. The man there chipped it to order and that ice was a lot harder and colder than the bagged ice you can buy today. Made a a really cold ice cream.
You were supposed to keep your left foot firmly planted on the floor when standing. The right foot should have been used for both pedals. There was a twist grip throttle on the shifter for use when changing gears. The one my Dad drove for Crowley’s even had a horn that sounded like a cow. The seat was a swing out for use when you were not actually jumping in and out every couple of houses. There was a conventional set of pedals above the standing pedals for use when you were using the seat.
It used to be common for vendors to come to your door. There were many companies: Fuller Brush, Jewel Tea, Charles Chips, and too many frozen food and dairy vendors to mention. Super Markets, with their ability to reduce costs, killed most of them. There are still a few, but it is no longer a common business model.
Classic Metal Works has a Metro van painted in Borden’s colors. I’ve got the Wonder Bread and Railway Express versions of this model, and they’re very nice models.
The ability to recreate scenes from our childhood is one of those things that I love about this hobby.
I remember well the milk man when I was a kid. Also the Charlie Chip man who brought pretzels and potatoe chips, and also had a big case full of all sorts of candies that he’d bring in to show off, occasionally my Mom would let me pick something. Our milk was delivered to a milk box on our front porch, we’d set out the empty bottles for return, and also a cup with money in it to pay for the new milk, with a note listing what we wanted. Milk, and the orange drink were staples, occasionally my Mom would also get us chocoalte milk. That all stopped in the late 70’s.
Back in the horse days, the milkman would hop off carrying enough milk for the next couple of houses if there were several customers in a row - the horse would trot ahead in the street while the milkman walked across yards. The horses would know the routes.
I guess I am as old or older than you guys; I remember all of these home delivery trucks; our’s was Borden’s Milk, Krugs Bakery, and we had a local ‘egg man’ who worked out of the trunk of his car. The ‘junk man’ came buy almost weekly with his horse drawn wagon and he had cow bells strung across two poles next to the ‘buckboard’ type seat. Our neighbor had a trellis type entry gate with a milk box built into the ‘fence’ with doors on both sides. The milk boxes were made of metal and had insulation inside to keep the milk cold for a coupe of hours. Never heard of anyone stealing milk or any other home delivery products back then. We also had a coal chute in the basement window that led to a coal bin on the floor. The coal truck would pull up to the side of our house and place a chute in the window to send the coal down to the bin. We finally had an oil furnace put in and I got to play in the 50lb bag of asbestos when we had to replace the burner ‘guns’ every few months/years. Wish I knew then what I know now about asbestos! Great memories though. Thanks to all who share them.
