Milkmen

Fifty Years of Milk Peddling

From the days of the horse drawn cart to the present day of motorized trucking, from 1888 to 1938. the many changes in the life of the early morning visitor, the milkman, were reviewed Saturday by Ray Russell of Mill Village, who had been in the milk delivery business in Rutland for 50 years on that day.

He bought his business on October 8, 1888, from A. J. Russell and still retains four of the customers he had at that time. He started with a high horse drawn cart and the next year built a low swung cart, the first to be used in Rutland by a milkman. With this type of cart. Russell was the first to break out the winter roads in the morning during the early days. In 1923 he secured the first truck used by milkmen in the city.

With the many changes in manner of delivery and health regulations, Russell says he now wonders why more illness did not result from handling. In the early days he delivered from huge cans,. pouring into a quart measure and then into the pans which housewives left, outside their doors. Milk bottles were not put into use until 1910, and then it was a matter at the customers choice. The milkman at the turn of the century did not scll cream and it was necessary for the customer to raise the cream in a pan.