Milk delivery

For other meanings see Milkman (disambiguation).

A milk truck

A milkman is a person, traditionally male, who delivers milk in milk bottles or cartons. Milk deliveries frequently occur in the morning and it is not uncommon for milkmen to deliver products other than milk such as eggs, cream, cheese, butter, yogurt or soft drinks. The term "milkman" is used to refer to either a man or woman doing this work.

Originally, milk needed to be delivered to houses daily since poor refrigeration meant it would quickly spoil. The near-ubiquity of refrigerators in homes in the developed world has decreased the need for frequent milk delivery over the past half-century and made the trade shrink in many localities sometimes to just 3 days a week and disappear totally in others. Additionally, milk delivery incurs a small cost on the price of dairy products that is increasingly difficult to justify and leaves delivered milk in a position where it is prone to theft.

Historically, British, Irish, and other European milkmen have traveled in an electric vehicle called a milk float, except on rural rounds. In Australia the delivery vehicle was usually a small gas or diesel engined truck with a covered milk-tray. In hotter areas, this tray is usually insulated.

In popular culture

• Stage alias of mashup artist Gregg Luskin

• The idealized milkman (friendly, dependable, clean-cut, wearing an immaculate white uniform) is a frequent symbol of bucolic suburban life. Just as often, the symbolism is inverted to turn the milkman into a menacing figure, hiding danger under a pleasant veneer.

• The frequent deliveries by milkmen to homes during the day has led to a high level of familiarity with many homemakers — often female — which has made the occupation a central figure in numerous milkman jokes.

• In the Uganda region an often used title for "king" is "Omukama", which means "superior milkman/milk bringer": a title that refers to a) the role of the leader as a feeder of the people and b) the historical tradition, that the ancient ruling class of some Ugandan kingdoms was of Hima-tribal stock (the Hima were cattle-holders).

• The lead character of Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye, is a milkman.

• A short story in the horror anthology Skeleton Crew by Stephen King, called "Morning Deliveries (Milkman No. 1)", concerns a milkman who kills people by leaving "surprises" (poison, toxic gas, venomous spiders, etc.) in their milk cans.

• The comedian Benny Hill had a hit novelty song about Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West).

• "Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman" is a comicbook character created by David Boswell which first appeared in 1980.

• In the Xbox video game Psychonauts, one of the patients in the abandoned mental hospital takes on the persona of a milkman. Within his own mind, the Milkman is the protector of decency in a world where a typical depiction of idyllic 1950's life thinly disguises an underbelly of deep-seated conspiracies. It's later revealed the the milkman's psychotic break stems from burning down his place of work using a Molotov Cocktail placed in a milk bottle.