# Who remembers home-delivered milk? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 17, 2004, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611 "2004-10-17T02:28:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2010, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/141 "2010-10-12T13:21:06Z")
I remeber it up to about first grade, which would have been '67-'68. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2010, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/142 "2010-10-12T14:13:14Z")
We had it when I was very young. We still had a milk box for much of my youth, but nothing was delivered to it. I’m guessing it was around 65 when I last saw it. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/143 "2010-10-12T18:46:05Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > I admit I am slightly puzzled why people “cannot imagine such a thing today”. I mean, delivering milk to an insulated container on a customer’s doorstep is hardly a major undertaking. The economics of it make it real hard to make a go of it today. - Delivery services have to price milk high. Milk is often used as a loss-leader by grocery stores; it is frequently on sale. But delivery services can’t do that as much, they don’t have the profit from other grocery sales to cover it. - The costs of delivery are much higher – gas, vehicles, and drivers pay. - Customers are farther apart – the old milkman used to stop at nearly every house. - More problems with theft of milk from someones door. Before, there was a housewife home at nearly every house. - More complicated payment arrangement needed – just leaving the money in the delivery box also faces theft problems. - People are much more mobile – most get to the grocery store at least once a week anyway. - Refrigerators (iceboxes) are larger & more efficient – people can get a weeks worth of milk at the store and keep it in the refrigerator. The milkman used to deliver a small amount every 2 or 3 days. There are still places where milk delivery (and other dairy items) is available. But now it’s a premium service, with busy people paying more for the convenience. (The old milkman was more a middle class service; wealthy people had their housekeeper get milk at the store, and kept it in their refrigerator.) ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2010, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/144 "2010-10-12T23:33:13Z")
We got it delivered twice a week. In glass bottles. The skim milk (which we kids all drank) had a black-printed cap; the whole milk (Dad liked that) in a red-printed cap. I think this stopped in the mid-to-late 1970s, at least I don’t recall it being delivered when I got home from college in the summers. We definitely still had it delivered when I was 13 or so. We had an insulated box just outside the back door, and that’s where the milk magically appeared. That sort of thing was pretty common. A couple of houses on our street had a pass-through in the wall by the side door, which was neat - it latched from the outside and from the inside; the milkman would put the bottles in the space and latch the door, then later in the morning the homeowner would open the inside door and nab the bottles. Supposedly they could deliver other stuff as well but I only recall Mom doing that maybe twice, ever. I remember getting _eggs_ delivered once or twice too, though that was a different person and only a few times when I was quite a bit younger. ---
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2010, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/145 "2010-10-13T00:22:52Z")
There is a daycare that shares the building I work in. They get milk delivery still. I seem to see the truck out there about twice a week. ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2010, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/146 "2010-10-14T01:15:43Z")
We got ours in quart glass bottles with cardboard caps, from B. F. Martin’s Dairy. The small local bottling plant in a northern Boston suburb was a 1/4 mile from home, beside my K-5 school playground. We used to go there and watch the bottles going down the line and getting filled and capped. I never saw a cow anywhere near there, though. It was really cool, er, cold, when on a winter morning, the milk on the stoop would freeze a bit and the semisolid cream would push the cardboard lid up a couple of inches. Reminds me also of Hood Milk Company’s “Hoodsies”, choc/vanilla ice cream in a cardboard cup with cardboard lid with a collectable picture of a movie or sports star on its underside and the face would be revealed by licking the ice cream off of it. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2010, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/147 "2010-10-14T02:50:42Z")
I’m the same age as twickster, and I remember, as a child, having milk delivered. I think it cost a little more, but my dad preferred it. He didn’t usually spend any money he didn’t have to. I’m such a city girl that once I thought the milk had spoiled, because a thick substance had clotted at the top. Turns out it was just cream! ---
**Author:** ![goldmund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a4c791/32.png) [@goldmund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/goldmund)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2010, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/148 "2010-10-14T04:09:23Z")
I was born in 1976 and grew up in suburban Warwick, Rhode Island… though Warwick was still making the fully suburban transition when I was very young. There were still farms, fields, woods, etc. My dad owned a convenience store, so our milk came from there. I do, however, remember folks getting milk delivered from Christiansen’s Dairy and Munroe Dairy. A quick googling tells me both are still around, and still delivering. Go figure. > [@Ignatz](#): > > Reminds me also of Hood Milk Company’s “Hoodsies”, choc/vanilla ice cream in a cardboard cup with cardboard lid with a collectable picture of a movie or sports star on its underside and the face would be revealed by licking the ice cream off of it. Hoodsies! Please tell me these are still around! I’ve very, very fond memories of these. IMO, the only **proper** way to eat a Hoodsie is with one of those flat, disposable wooden “spoons” that came wrapped in paper, like [this](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21V8xYFY-hL._SL160_AA160_.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2010, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/149 "2010-10-14T05:22:42Z")
We had it here until 1990 or maybe 93? I don’t recall. Coleman Dairy’s truck had milk, bread, ice cream and other items. Fantastic for shut-ins that couldn’t get to the store often. Kind of sad when it stopped. They’d done it for several decades. here’s the truck in the 1960’s [http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?mediaID=8120](http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?mediaID=8120) ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2010, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/150 "2010-10-14T09:28:30Z")
It seems to me that, in the UK at least, home delivery services have had something of a resurgence in the past decade. We get pretty much all our food shopping delivered, once a week, from Tesco. We sometimes also get a vegetable box from [Riverford](http://www.riverford.co.uk/) which is a franchise that delivers organic veg to the door. The milkman, as I have posted above, still does his rounds and now sells, bread, eggs and many other groceries in addition to milk. And this isn’t in some quaint olde-worlde rural idyll - I live in a suburban town about 35 miles from London. ---
**Author:** ![Ruby\_Slippers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/94ad74/32.png) [@Ruby\_Slippers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby_Slippers)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2010, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/151 "2010-10-14T09:54:31Z")
I remember having milk delivered to our house back in the 50s. But what I remember most is that the milkman used a horse-drawn wagon, not a truck. The horse knew the routine – he would keep slowly plodding along on the route while the milkman trotted back and forth between the wagon and the front porches. Very efficient! ---
**Author:** ![Largo62](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/45deac/32.png) [@Largo62](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Largo62)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/152 "2011-03-08T02:43:51Z")
At first the milk was delivered on the front porch. But there could be weather involved. (Yeah, right! This was California.) Our kitchen opened directly into the garage. My dad was very handy. He cut a hole in the garage wall to the side, and built a little door that opened on bottom mounted hinges to a box just large enough to accommodate a rack of milk bottles. The milk man open the door from the outside and exchange full bottles for empties. Then Mom could get the full bottles from inside the garage without ever having to go outside. I’m pretty sure this was the Alta Dena dairy, although I remember trucks from Adohr Farms in the area, too. Back in those days there was delivery of bread from the Helms Bakery, too. The bread truck was almost as popular with neighborhood kids as the Good Humor man. Those things are all just memories now. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/153 "2011-03-08T03:04:12Z")
Yep. We had it delivered by horse and cart in the 70’s. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/154 "2011-03-08T18:28:47Z")
We used to have not only milk, but bread, eggs and chicken delivered. This was in the '50s. The family had only one car, which Dad used to go to work. Grocery shopping was done on Thursday nights. The only other alternative for fresh stuff was to send a child to a little store that was about a mile or so away (obviously only possible after the child had reached the appropriate age). The stuff was delivered by the farmers themselves, and was undoubtedly much fresher than what we get today at the supermarket. No idea on relative cost, though. On occasion Mom would drive Dad to work so she could have the car during the day for things that couldn’t be done weekends or evenings or done by a child on foot or bike. Heck, I remember once having to wait for Dad to come home from work so I could be taken to the hospital to have a wound stitched up! ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/155 "2011-03-08T18:51:27Z")
> [@MLS](#): > > … Heck, I remember once having to wait for Dad to come home from work so I could be taken to the hospital to have a wound stitched up! And you’re a stronger man for it! ---
**Author:** ![desert29rat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5fc32e/32.png) [@desert29rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/desert29rat)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2011, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611/156 "2011-03-09T04:05:26Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > Sorry for the slight hijack, but is it still true that margarine in Wisconsin has to be white? It is illegal for it to be yellow? When I was growing up, Wisconsin was the only state that only allowed butter, real butter, to be yellow, the “natural” color. Everything else had to be white - to show it was not the real thing. Was always very strange to visit and see white margarine. > > Just wondering. That’s interesting. I remember my mother telling me that in the early days of margarine, it was white. She said the package included yellow button of color that you would mix in yourself to make it look more like butter. I guess they weren’t allowed to color it at the factory way back then (1940s maybe). It must have looked like shortening, and apparently it didn’t taste any better. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-remembers-home-delivered-milk/269611.md?page=7)