Even the fastest milk float in the West couldn’t handle the volume of work undertaken by Seaways Services
By David W Weston
PHOTOGRAPHY David W Weston
There is every chance you take it for granted, even though you will handle one several times throughout the day. We are, of course, talking about the humble milk bottle.
The first glass milk bottles were introduced in the 1880s by the Express Dairy Company. These early bottles were fitted with a porcelain stopper which was held on with wire. They were delivered several times per day, as pasteurisation was not invented until the 1900s. After that, the daily pinter could be delivered in the morning and the milk would not go off.
During the 1920s, the first advertisements started to appear on milk bottles, showing the customers which dairy the milk had come from. During the 1960s and 1970s, everyone had printed milk bottles for all the different dairies which existed at the time. There were several different reasons for the reduction in their use, one being that some of the larger dairies’ bottle-washing machines saw the printing on the bottle and mistook it for a dirty bottle, then kicked it out of the line.
As featured in the September 2014 issue of Trucking. Buy the magazine here
