Lots of “traveling salesman” work wholesale, not door-to-door. Back when I was a kid, there were salesmen who would show up at my father’s store every couple of weeks to take orders. We would reorder stock, and they would suggest new items. The salesmen worked different lines (we sold a bit of everything): hardware, toys, housewares, etc. I assume they had a regular route.
So what does the Swan food truck driver fall under. They still stop at the country residences and sells food.
It’s “Schwan.” Misspell it again and I’ll cut out your liver.
I kid. But anyway, my mom bought a shitload of food from the Schwan’s truck last time they stopped at her house, and she let me have some of it. The barbecued ribs, biscuits, and ice cream are really really good, I’d recommend the service to anyone.
What charming stories of days gone by!
Hmm, not sure. They’re usually mentioned only in passing, or briefly as unseen characters. “I once dated a travelling salesman…” Something like that. Then there was that one salesman who showed up at Lucy Ricardo’s door with a vacuum cleaner, and man was that thing ever huge. Like a miniature iron lung.
I have an abnormal loathing for salesmen, possibly due to my low sales reststance.
Only under a paper moon, though.
Travelling salesmen sold sweets, braces, drawing pins, sellotape, hoovers, rucksacks, biros, plimsoils, pants, and trousers.
Traveling salesmen, on the other hand, sold candy, suspenders, thumb tacks, Scotch tape, vacuum cleaners, backpacks, ballpoint pens, tennis shoes, underwear, and pants.
My grandma had a regular visit from the Jewel T man. IIRC, he sold spices and dishes. As a matter of fact, I still have some of the mixing bowls she bought from him.
Stoves!
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=stove+sample&category0=
I found one in our attic and thought it was a rare find. It fetched five bucks at the local flea market.
nah its never mentioned what he sells. Stockings are an important symbol in the play and lingerie is mentioned, but not in the context of sales.
I may be confusing the Jewel T man with another mobile salesman, but I remember him stopping his truck in our neighborhood back in the '70s. Whoever it is I am remembering sold, among other things, yummy ice pops with a blue raspberry flavor that would stain your tongue indigo, and some yummy fruit-flavored toothpaste with Bugs Bunny on the tube.
Meanwhile, our neighborhood now gets regular visits by the ice cream truck and the fish truck.
Actually, to some degree, the vacuum cleaner sales are still done in-home. I, personally, have seen a “demonstration” (read: sales pitch) of the Rainbow vacuum cleaner/air purifier/whatever-else-they-claim-it’ll-do system. The demonstration was pretty impressive, but the thing cost a fortune. You can buy 'em on eBay cheaper, but I don’t think they’re sold in brick-and-mortars at all.
Oh, yeah, we had a demo of some new windows a few years back, too. Kicked the salesman out of our house when he refused to give us a price for what we wanted. He wanted to play games! (“How much would these windows be worth to you?”) Even after we said, no, we’re not playing, just give us a price, he wouldn’t. So we invited him to leave.
Hopefully not the same truck.
My father was a traveling salesman, in that he had a territory and a route and a regular travel schedule. However, he sold electrical steel – a somewhat exotic product that only a few hundred manufacturers in the U.S. actually bought, and then usually in freight car-sized shipments.
A dooor-to-door salesman, on the other hand, usually sold household items (anything from brushes to vacuum cleaners.) Even in our 21st century suburb, we still have people driving around with a truckload of firewood asking if we’d like to buy some right off the truck.
My grandad, who recently passed away at 100, was a travelling salesman in his youth. While I certainly don’t know his entire history, I believe he at first worked for Balfour selling class rings and pins but judging by the warehouse contents behing his houise he later worked for himself. And what a warehouse it was! We used to play there when we were kids and it was old and abandoned even then, around half the size of a house and inhabitated by feral cats. The were rafter after rafter of antiquated items, some exposed and others in tattered boxes; fence electrifiers, 48 star flags, the little baby tables where you’d set them in a seat in the middle of, strollers, venetian blinds, items so obsolete we couldn’t identify them and fans, dozens and dozens of large, small and medium sized fans.
I remember him telling of driving his old Model A or T or whatever it was on lonely, country roads in the winter, multiple flat tires always a threat, and having to put a lit candle on the dashboard so it would melt a small enough opening on the windshield so he hould lean over and look through as he drove from town to town.
There are still traveling salesmen. I spent a day as one. When I was unemployed, I saw an ad in the newspaper about something that sounded appealing, and I went in for an “interview”, where basically they shoved me in a car with 2 salesmen, and we went to various shops, bars, homes, restaurants, and parks and just wandered up to people and sold whatever crap they had in their trunks. Their inventory changed from day to day, and they sold whatever it was the “main office” gave them to sell. The day I tagged along it was a variety of kid’s toys and books, but there was also some strange pizza cutter or something. I was stuck with them for about 4 hours, and kept asking to just be taken back to the “main office”. The salesmen told me they couldn’t take me back because they were competing with other salesmen in the area and had to hit the “hot spots” before they did.
It was probably one of the low points of my job search.
It always amazes me to hear that there are still businesses based on this brute force method of marketing. I wonder if they stay in business, or do they exist for a short period then go bankrupt, only to be replaced by another dimwit who thinks this is the best way to sell crap to the world?
As recently as 1997 or so, I remember getting a cold-call knock on my door from the Kirby vacuum guy. His pitch was pretty damned impressive: with masking tape, he marked off a roughly 3’ x 3’ section of our living room carpet. He then had us vacuum it with our own vacuum. After we had done so throroughly, he went behind us with his Kirby vacuum and sucked up another cubic shitload of dust and stuff that our vacuum had failed to pick up. While our jaws were gaping, he then gave us a smiling but grim cautionary tale about allergens, dust mites, mold and other dangerous environmental hazards.
He succeeded in squicking me out completely and making me want to flee my home, but not in selling me any $1200 vacuum cleaners.
Youtube video of Reverend Jim’s stint as a door to door salesman. Make sure you watch to the end.
We also had a Kirby salesman come to our house a few years back. He had called and offered us a free car vacuum if we sat through a demo, so my wife took advantage to get him to vacuum the living room.
The Kirby sales peole are still at it. Rob Cockerham has a pretty interesting page on it at cockeyed.com.
We were visited about five years back, and our experience mirrors others I’ve read about - you might get your living room vacuumed, but you’ll never get those three hours of your life back.
My wife’s sister bought a Kirby from a door-to-door salesman just a couple of years ago (2005, I think). She just recently finished paying it off. I’m sure it’s a wonderful vacuum, but it’d better have some very special attachments to be worth $1500.
The odd thing, though, was that at the time she was living in a very poor neighborhood. You wouldn’t think that they’d be the target audience for a $1500 vacuum, but apparently that’s how these salesmen work these days: hard-sell expensive stuff to people who really can’t afford it, and have them paying $75 a month forever.