(800) 853-2651
SHOP NOW

Milk can slingers?

R

rrlund

Well-known Member
The old picture I posted last night of the Carnation milk plant got me to thinking about something I read 20 years or so ago. It was a weekly column in an ag paper as I recall.
The guy claimed that when he was a kid,all the milk haulers had what he called "can slingers" or CS. The article was about the CS. He said they were usually the local high school dropouts who you'd see just hanging out around town,always a cigarette hanging out of their mouth. He claimed they'd ride in the back of the truck,jump out and pull the empties out and load the full cans then jump back in the truck,sometimes without the truck ever coming to a full stop.
I hauled can milk,my Dad hauled,my uncle worked in the receiving room at the condensary for 35 years,dumping cans,weighing and testing milk. I knew all the haulers since I was old enough to remember anything. I never knew anybody to have a CS who rode along.
Anybody else remember a hauler ever having somebody who rode along regularly so all they had to do was drive? Or was this guy just confusing the milk truck with the garbage truck?
 
I drove a milk truck from 1955 until 1968 and never had anyone to help me throw the cans in the truck.

It was nearly impossible to find anyone to take over if I wanted to take a day off, or God forbid when it came time for a weeks holiday.
 
Never seen a helper, just his kids in the summer,seen our guy carry out two tens and set them in the truck one handed with out ever setting them down. I would not want to mess with those guys. Local hauler is in the 4th generation, hauls my Son in Laws milk. We went bulk in the fall of 1956, where has the time gone, seems like only a couple years ago.
 
My dad used to ride along with a local guy that picked up the milk cans. As he got older he would drive the truck and do the route himself. That led to a job delivering bottled milk door to door. He always teased my oldest brother that he was the milkman's kid!
 
As I recall, those 10 gal. cans weighed about 100# full, more than I weighed when working on dairy farm as a kid. But I could also sling a 120 # feed bag over my shoulder and carry it away. Doubt if I could nowadays.
 
I too, remember Milk haulers, who would carry a
milk can in each hand, and throw them up into
the truck.....the good old days!
 

Man that bring back memories .. My brother drove a milk truck for years .. in the summer I would ride alone { I was around 8 , I think } ... anyway remember getting up real early and helping where I could .. 10 gallon was heavy for me , but I could roll them on the edge standing up not tipping them much ... then moving the FULL ones to the FRONT of the truck and moving the EMPTY ones to the BACK ... it was work and my brother did it everyday ... 7 days a week ...
THANKS for bringing back some past memories ....
.................... mark
 
Ya,I'd always try to get somebody to ride along on a holiday so I could get back early,but a day off? Ya right,might as well try to get somebody to milk cows.
 
Actually,my uncle who worked in the receiving room said the average was 72 pounds of milk in one. Technically they'd hold 86,but very few guys ever filled them full. I couldn't tell you what an empty weighed. We always had the empties in the truck from the day before and if somebody was up a can so we were going to have to rearrange things,we could generally pour one full can over in to the rest so we took just the number of cans we left.

But yea,it was all about leverage. Taking two cans at once was normal. I sure wouldn't want to try to carry even one very far now days.
 
I don't recall seeing any 'slingers', but judging from the way our cans came back all beat up and caved in, somebody must have been slinging 'em.
 

I don't remember a helper. I remember a dark green six wheel truck with an old insulated body. He had to back up to the milk house and pull the cans out of the trough that the spring water ran through. before that truck my grandfather hauled them into town probably eight miles, with his pick-up truck. I can remember riding with him one time.
 
way before my time but my dad used to help my uncle out. Ran the route by himself. He was in high-school then. Said they had a system of keeping the empties and full ones in a certain order to keep the truck packed right so the cans wouldn't tip. If someone was short a can or had an extra it would screw the whole route up.

I think he also did alot of my uncle's milking and farm work while my uncle worked at a regular job. At one time dad milked almost all their neighbor's cows and both his brothers but never his own. Granddad helped uncles get into dairying but not dad. So he went in AirForce and then became an engineer via the gi-bill.
 
In my old country I never trucked milk cans but milked plenty of them full.
We were the first ones on the milk route so we had to be done milking at 6.30 morning and evening.
When a lot of dairy farms had gone to bulk in the seventy's
the milk truck started coming only once a day.
Later the plant wanted the few small farmers left in my area to haul the cans to a central point for pick up along the milk route
That didn't go to well cause town folks started stealing empty cans.(apparently they became a collectors item :roll:)
I was often a can short and one time all 8 were gone, then i had to drive to the plant to get other cans so i could milk the cows.
After a year of this BS the plant quit hauling and i had to deliver the cans to the plant myself(3 miles away).
Then the local plant closed,..and i had to quit milking or go bulk.
I emigrated a year later.
I took 4 of my milk cans(they were aluminum) with me to Canada.
Guess what,....They were all stolen here :cry:
 
Ya,all of the cans had their own place,depending on where a stop was on the route and how you pulled up to the cooler. We always unloaded in the same order too so the guy in the receiving room could just stand there and turn over the weight slips in the same order every day and didn't have to search through them. Many was the time that if a guy was down a can,we'd leave the empty in the truck then unload it right along with the full ones,let it go through the whole system and come back out so we could reload them the way they were supposed to be.
I got real good at playing with those little hand held games where you'd slide the numbers around and try to get them in the right numerical order. Having things in the right slot just became second nature.
 
We hauled our own to town i can still feel the effect of coming in to low and catching the endgate .when we unloaded the milk we than refilled with whey for the pigs.you could always tell a farm truck that whey would rot them out right away.
 
I remember the article, I think it was in Hoards Dairyman. Probably Richard Triumpho or Dr. McCormack wrote it.
One granddad switched to bulk in the 50s. Free hauling was the big selling point, before that dad had to load the cans from 40 milk cows (he had a relatively large herd for the time) onto the 47 Dodge and haul to a plant about 10 miles away.
Other grandfather sold out in 68 rather than invest in a bulk tank. He milked about 2 dozen cows and couldnt justify it at his age.
 
Never anything but one man acts with our truckers.
One that hacked my dad off was the one who would roll the can on the edge across the nicely poured concrete floor, chipping and grinding the surface. Words were said!
 
Interesting stories of picking up milk and the delivery. Glad all those stories are only memories today. Especially at this time of year , cold, snow, rain, ice. Equipment was not as reliable in those years gone past. We have made progress over the past 50 or 60 years. It is quite remarkable how the stories covered many parts of U.S.A. and Canada. The phasing out of milk cans in the 50's and going bulk, glass milk bottles changing to waxed cardboard and now mostly plastic.Cheers, Murray
 
Actually there's an Amish cheese plant right here in the county that still takes canned milk. We had it better when I hauled as far as I'm concerned. We had special truck boxes for it. Most of the haulers around here have had to improvise by cutting door holes in the sides of box trucks. Can't buy those milk boxes anymore.
 
Dad sold milk to a cheese factory 20 miles away. The driver loaded the truck and he was a stocky fellow. I was just a kid, but loading them cans looked like work. Dad had someone bring out some whey to feed the hogs. Had a stand alone hog waterer we had to fill with a garden hose. Dad put the whey in it and it took all the galvenize off the insides. It was short lived after that.
 
Randy, you must know what this device is.
a141331.jpg

a141332.jpg
 
My Dad drove milk truck for awhile had a newfoundland (dog) that would ride on the roof and sometimes slid of on the turns. Dad would stop he would jump back on and away they went. This was before my time so I only heard the stories.
 
This is the old Borden Creamery in Mt. Pleasant, MI . My Grandpa is the one to the far right and he sold the route to my Dad and when I was born (1951) that milk truck was all Ma and Dad had for transportation and we all went to buy groceries in it.Never any stories about having help on the trucks.
a141336.jpg
 

When Dad was milking, I remember the haulers carrying two cans and swinging them into the truck, one handed. Once in a while there would be a rider along just to chat.
Randy,The ones I remember, Waddy and Max Cole, Larry Cain, and another from Coral, Mi. I still see Max and Cindy Cole quite often.
 


A funny story told to me:a local dairy farmer borrowed some money from another farmer.The first gent delivered his own milk in cans to the plant and loaded his truck with his cans. Empty or full,the cans went on his truck and the truck was driven passed the second gents farm everyday just so that guy just knew he was makeing money.
 
I remember a "path" grooved into the concrete from the water cooler to the walk-in box from rolling the milk cans on the floor. I did not see anyone mention their water coolers, where you set the warm cans in the ice water to cool the milk. Dad had to haul his own milk cans to the dairy, and bought pasturized milk to sell in our store, which he brought back, so he was loaded both ways. What a lot lifting he did, 5"9, 175#. He had to quit milking in "71, just when I was getting big enough to help lift. Mark
 
The man who hauled our milk (grandad went bulk long before I came to be) had a half-dozen tandem trucks in the late 60s/early 70s, and they all ran 2 routes a day. Now his grandson has 2 tri-axles, and only one runs each day. He keeps the second truck for hauling water to fill swimming pools each spring. He probably makes more with the water than the milk.
When my dad drove for him, he still had 3 tri-axles, and each one ran a route a day, back around 89-92. When I rode along dad had an HS (hose slinger).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Tony in SD
Machinery Delivery Memory
2
Replies
37
Views
923
K Effective
K
J
September 1949 road trip photos
2
Replies
25
Views
2K
used red MN
U
RedMF40
Third Cub's the Charm
Replies
7
Views
665
SweetFeet
SweetFeet
showcrop
Haying problems
Replies
4
Views
432
showcrop
showcrop
olgentdc
B-i-L Joel passed away His Eulogy 10-22--56/// 11-8--
Replies
9
Views
1K
olgentdc
olgentdc
Tractor Parts Tractor Manuals

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Copyright © 1997-2024 Yesterday's Tractor Co.

All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this website, including design and content, without written permission is strictly prohibited. Trade Marks and Trade Names contained and used in this Website are those of others, and are used in this Website in a descriptive sense to refer to the products of others. Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy TRADEMARK DISCLAIMER: Tradenames and Trademarks referred to within Yesterday's Tractor Co. products and within the Yesterday's Tractor Co. websites are the property of their respective trademark holders. None of these trademark holders are affiliated with Yesterday's Tractor Co., our products, or our website nor are we sponsored by them. John Deere and its logos are the registered trademarks of the John Deere Corporation. Agco, Agco Allis, White, Massey Ferguson and their logos are the registered trademarks of AGCO Corporation. Case, Case-IH, Farmall, International Harvester, New Holland and their logos are registered trademarks of CNH Global N.V.

Yesterday's Tractors - Antique Tractor Headquarters
Website Accessibility Policy

Back
Top