Hacker News Reader

Comment by petepete | Hacker News Reader

In the 80s in the UK we had milk delivered every morning in glass bottles by a huge fleet of electric vehicles. The empty bottles were left out, collected by the milkman, sterilised and reused.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float

View on HN

Just collected the milk from the doorstep. Still electric! Milkman wears a headband light. 3 times a week because we have fridges now.

In 70s after an all night party I nearly got run over by one. The only moving vehicle in sight!

Was brilliant during lockdown because you could order food stuffs the night before 3 times a week as part of regular delivery.

When my parents were kids in Asia they used to get all their club soda delivered in cartons in glass bottles that had a little glass ball in it to hold in the carbonation. You then pushed the glass ball down to open it up. They would then sterilize and reuse those and the glass ball would self seal once carbonated again.

What a really nice, fully reusable bottle with no waste at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codd-neck_bottle?wprov=sfti1

the seal is waste depending what it is made of. ramune uses some kind of plasticy stuff, for example

Ah interesting. I though it was glass on glass.

Historically it was pure glass but modern retro recreations usually adds that plastic cap, pusher rod and a plastic wrapper for easier manufacturing as well as for corporate liabilities. Those aren't technically necessary.

I have not seen one that is pure glass. The oldest I have seen has a gasket. Every source I see indicates a rubber gasket was used in the first versions.

And fizzy pop! I dare say every town had one. In Sunderland we had Sykes. They’d come round once a week; you left your old bottles out front and they’d be swapped out for new.

I always loved dandelion & burdock.

https://www.sunderlandecho.com/heritage-and-retro/retro/sars...

Villa pop FTW!

https://sunderlandglobalmedia.org/made-in-sunderland-the-his...

Dom't forget Ireland (according to Father Ted) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSstu2tzrng

I can attest. We had a milkman (daily), and a vegetable man, an egg man and a bread man who came around every week. Only the milkman had an electric vehicle.

In NZ - ditto growing up had the milk delivery service. Now it was a long distance memory until we moved to a smaller town/city. To our surprise one of the independent milk companies had a delivery service and up until a few months ago there was a glass bottle based delivery service of proper milk (the kind with thick fat/cream on the top..). Absolutely magic.

Alas cost of living took hold and they stopped the service, so sadly off to the store for the milk now. They didn't even put up an option of 'we can't afford to keep this going, so how much would you pay extra for it'

I bet they would have been surprised what people would illogically pay to have their milk and eggs delivered...

I remember growing up when milk delivery in glass bottles was replaced by milk delivery in plastic bags (in cardboard boxes). All that ultimately went away when milk was just another thing you bought at the grocery store. I imagine the supply chain got fast and good enough that milk wouldn't spoil before it could be consumed, going that route, so the extra cost of home delivery became difficult to justify.

I remember how birds learned that the silver-top milk had a thick lay of cream so if you didn't fetch it in pronto, you'd find all your bottles would have the tops pecked through.

The noise of the electric milk float was oddly haunting. Partly because it was generally still dark outside.

Same here in South Africa, albeit just with a normal truck. They also delivered Orange and/or Guava Juice depending on what tokens you'd put out.

Do you know what percentage of after tax income people paid fir this? I'm curious how other compares to today's services.

Paid for the service? I grew up in Scotland, milk and meat came from the farms every morning (90s), you'd put your order in the old milk bottle with the money and they'd leave whatever your order was. I seem to recall it was 50p for most type of milk and 75p for creams. (Except the BSE years.. shudder ugh the BSE years.)

[Edit] Do you think that the Aphex Twin song Milkman makes reference to this lack of milk delivery during this period?

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is an incurable and invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle. . . . Spread to humans is believed to result in variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD). As of 2018, a total of 231 cases of vCJD had been reported globally.

BSE is thought to be due to an infection by a misfolded protein, known as a prion. Cattle are believed to have been infected by being fed meat-and-bone meal (MBM) that contained either the remains of cattle who spontaneously developed the disease or scrapie-infected sheep products. The outbreak increased throughout the United Kingdom due to the practice of feeding meat-and-bone meal to young calves of dairy cows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...

I just looked into it a bit. Timeline makes a lot of sense, Milkman was released in 1996, right during the height of the precautions (some farm kids couldn't come to school, needed to get sprayed down with some chemicals when we went into the high school, every shop/library/etc had a bucket of alcohol you walked through. However, it seems James was living in London during that period, and I don't think the restrictions in the cities were are harsh as the country. Interesting theory tho, I like it. :)

I can remember milk delivery in the 1970s in where I grew up in Scotland moving from glass bottles to rather ghastly plastic sachets.

There are still companies doing this, check out Milk and More

I just had a look at this (I'd been meaning to for a while, I miss the milkman leaving milk and other bits from my childhood). The milk is literally 4x the price I would pay in the supermarket. It's a lovely idea, but in this economic climate, most people are more price-conscious than that...

Yes it is unfortunately... we used to use them as it supports a local farmer with a proper price for their milk and the delivery guy gets paid a fair amount but when prices shot up we went back to supermarket milk.

I'm all for making sure farmers get paid properly instead of ripped off by the supermarkets but when it comes down to it had to count the pennies at home first

There's often a few middle men with better websites but if you have a more direct option see if you can. The milk we get has a big creamy layer on the top, and tbh it's quite handy just getting a regular delivery of something we have commonly. We often add in some eggs.

It's more than the supermarket prices but those are insanely low for the product. I understand many feel the pinch more but if you can, skipping the supermarket can mean more to the actual producers.

I looked into this a while ago, but as I live in a block of flats with multiple locked entry doors needing the intercom etc it’s sadly not an option.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com