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Does anyone remember what was delivered on milk floats?
I'm reaching back into memory from more than twenty years ago and it's fairly hazy but I'm pretty sure they also delivered bread, eggs and bacon as well as milk. It may have been a grocery van I'm thinking of or even ice cream vans but I don't remember too well (it's "Elvis Lives!" era).

Does anybody remember clearly?

The reason I ask is because I've been thinking about fast-crash-solution scenarios for the UK and I thought of milk floats and ice cream vans.

If fuel is unavailable and there is no rapid scale up of electric cars, then a lot of people may not be able to get to the shops, even if they still can get to work.

Conversely, I believe that the long distance part of the supply chain is a lot more resilient than the "last mile" since much can be shifted to rail and sea-freight etc. Not to mention that it's a lot more cost effective from the point of view of fuel use to move ten tons of bacon on the back of a truck than it is to drive five miles to Tesco and pick up 15 bags of groceries and fling them in the back of the car. So I reckon the logistics network will keep running in spite of what the like of Jim Kunstler says.

But the customer-to-the-shops bit might be a bit hard if fuel costs upwards of 3 quid a liter and wages have plummeted.

So in that scenario, milk floats making deliveries to the housing schemes sounds like a viable business.

I've long thought that bikes with trailers, handcarts, and even dogcarts could play a part in this. I live a bike ride away from an organic dairy farm. The notion of loading up a trailer with a big container of milk (you know, like a churn...) and trailing round the village for folk to come out and have their own containers filled - I say village, but ours is a village as big as some small towns, you see - that makes me smile when I think of it.

When I was a kid, the milk came on an electric float. (There is still an electric float in the village - owned by the 'green' group).

Groceries were sold off the back of a van, door to door. Greens were delivered once a week by the greengrocer.

Shopping was almost daily. Walked to the shops. No freezer in the house until I was a teenager.

(phone, or colour TV, or central heating, or computers or video games blah blah )

I remember when it was only milk that was carried on the float. With the Co-op you bought plastic tokens which you left out over night with the empties, one token=one pint, can you imagine!!
Only later did they start to sell eggs, butter, bread, pop etc to gain more income.

Orange juice was something that was sold from milk floats - not sure how disaster-resilient that would be though.

I remember in the 60s the excitement of the grocery van arriving at my grandparents' every Saturday afternoon. It was the time of the early days of wrestling on ITV. The doors opened out at the back and there was a central aisle with the food stocked against the sides of the van. I'm sure I remember ice cream and sweets coming out of the van!

My father-in-law had a greengrocer van that he took around the local villages for many, many years up until the early 90s. He sold veg from Brighton market and his own smallholding.

I helped out on a milk float round in the early 60's. We only delivered milk and 'orange juice' which was sold in the same bottles as the milk with the foil caps. Not sure how much real oranges it contained!

Yea...remember the milk float, orange juice, bread and eggs.

We have a grocers van that comes and visits the retirement homes in the village where I live now... (nearest shop is 7 miles drive believe it or not)

But there used to be a butchers and a fish van up until about 3 years ago. Fish and chips van used to come once a week, but sadly no more. There is a mobile library I have seen but apparently the mobile bank no longer visits (why bother when there is nowhere to spend the cash!)

There is a post office in the village but the old grunt that runs it refuses to stock anything apart from postage stamps and envelopes. We have two pubs, one of which serves acceptable food, the other serves just booze and brawls. Neither pub has taken the plunge to stock offsales or any general products.

There are lots of villages like this.

Milk floats. Weren't we good?

Virtually silent vehicles in the early morning.

One vehicle serving many.

Bottles recycled till they dropped dead.

We even recycled the foil tops.

We usually even knew where the milk came from.

Virtually unrecyclable, one-use tetrapaks were not invented then.

Are we now stupid?

There's a fish van (non-electric, but you can't have everything) that comes by here every Friday. He even sells edible seaweed! I'd be out there like a shot but sadly the other 1/2 doesn't like fish. There's a milkman but he deliversin the middle of the day when everyone's at work, and he doesn't do organic. So we have to slum it with plastic bottles, but at least they go in the recycling (whether they actually get recycled, or end up hot in Sheffield, is another question altogether).

We've bought a big sod-off bike trailer for that "last mile" scenario. There are loads of shops, of all sizes, within cycling distance of here.

RenewableCandy wrote:We've bought a big sod-off bike trailer for that "last mile" scenario. There are loads of shops, of all sizes, within cycling distance of here.

We need to see it, RC. Don't be shy.

emordnilap wrote:Milk floats. Weren't we good?

Virtually silent vehicles in the early morning.

One vehicle serving many.

Bottles recycled till they dropped dead.

We even recycled the foil tops.

We usually even knew where the milk came from.

Virtually unrecyclable, one-use tetrapaks were not invented then.

Are we now stupid?

I don't understand, I still get my milk this way, four pints on Monday, Weds and Friday.

He delivers at six in the morning.

What's changed ? (I think the 'floats' are now petrol, but still very quiet)

Ballard, you're just very lucky (or else caught in a timewarp in Surrey while the rest of the country goes downhill).

And don't worry pictures of the Renewable bike-trailer will be forthcoming as soon as I get round to it...

When I was a lad, the milk was delivered by a horse drawn cart - 1950s south east London.

When my Dad was a lad he used to deliver milk with a cart drawn by a pony called Peggy. Early 20th century Berkshire.

When my dad was a lad, his dad had to pull the milk cart.