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Delivery service dedicated to supplying milk

Milk delivery is a delivery service dedicated to supplying milk, typically in bottles or cartons, to customers' homes. This service is performed by a milkman, milkwoman, or milk deliverer. (In contrast, a cowman or milkmaid tends to cows.) The delivery route is a milk route or milk run.

In some countries, when a lack of good refrigeration meant that milk would quickly spoil, milk was delivered to houses daily. Before milk bottles were available, milkmen took churns on their rounds and filled the customers' jugs by dipping a measure into the churn. Due to improved packaging and the spread of refrigerators in private homes, the need for milk delivery decreased from the latter part of the twentieth century. These advances contributed to the decline or loss of services in many localities, from deliveries daily to just three days a week or less in others. Milk is usually delivered in the morning. Milk deliverers often also deliver products such as butter, cream, cheese, eggs, meat and vegetables. In some areas, apartments and houses have small milk delivery doors, latched but not locked, opening into small wooden cabinets built into the exterior wall of the house, with a door also on the inside, allowing groceries or milk to be put in the cabinet by the deliverer and removed by the resident.

In 1963, nearly 29.7 percent of consumers in the US had milk delivered, but by 1975 the number had dropped to 6.9 percent of total sales. By 2005, about 0.4% of consumers in the United States had their milk delivered, and a handful of companies had sprung up to offer the service. During the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, some remaining milkmen saw demand increase suddenly (similar to other grocery delivery services) due to concerns about the infection risk involved with shopping in stores.

In India, milk is usually delivered using milk churns, a practice that has ceased in western countries. On the road, they are put on any kind of vehicle. In big cities such as Mumbai, milk churns are often transported in luggage compartments in local trains. In the Philippines, the milkman or milkmaid is called lechero, as in Spanish speaking countries. The tradition stemmed from the community production of carabao milk, which the lechero delivers fresh to their designated barangay (village). The lechero heritage used to be widely practiced in the country but declined after the introduction of store bought milk during the American period. Nowadays, only a few communities have lecheros, notably in Nueva Ecija province, the milk capital of the Philippines.

In Australia, the delivery vehicle was usually a small petrol or diesel truck with a covered milk tray. In hotter areas, this tray is usually insulated. In New Zealand, milk deliveries used horses until the 1960s, where trucks took over completely. Originally, people paid by leaving money in the bottles, but later, payments were made using tokens, usually bought at a local dairy. Home milk deliveries died out in the 1990s after the deregulation of the milk industry, where supermarkets and other stores were permitted to sell milk.

Milkmen appeared in Britain around 1860, when the first railways allowed fresh milk to arrive in cities from the countryside. By 1880, the milk was delivered in bottles. By 1975, 94% of milk was in glass bottles, but in 1990, supermarkets started offering plastic and carton containers, reducing bottled milk from 94% to 3% by 2016. The British comedian Benny Hill, himself a former milkman, had a hit novelty song called "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)" (1971). Ella Mae Morse had a US top 10 hit with "Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet", from the film Broadway Rhythm (1944). The (unnamed) milkwoman was an occasional character in British sitcom Open All Hours, the object of Granville's desire. Despite working early mornings just as Granville did, she was also a part time university student and a divorcee, representing aspirations of a life lived beyond the terraced streets of the local neighborhood. Episode 3 of the third series of television comedy series Father Ted is titled "Speed 3" and centers around the lascivious behavior of milkman Pat Mustard, Ted's feud with him, and the tragic outcome. In Raymond Briggs' graphic novel Ethel and Ernest, based on the true story of Mr. Briggs' parents, Ernest Briggs, Raymond's father, is described as being a milkman for the R. A. C. S.