Milkman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the occupation of milk delivery. For the Phranc album, see Milkman (album).

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 dairy products other than milk like egg nog, cream and even yogurt or butter. 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 as 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 profession shrink in many localities, 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.

A milk truck
A milk truck

Despite these drawbacks, the enterprise is still common in the UK and Ireland.

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


  • The frequent deliveries of 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 about adultery in this context.
  • In the Uganda region an often used title for "king" is "Omukama", which means "superior milkman/milk bringer": a title that refers both to the role of the leader as a feeder of the people and the historical tradition, that the ancient ruling class of some Ugandan kingdoms was of Hima-tribal stock (the Hima were cattle-holders).
  • 'Milkman' is the title of a song by Aphex Twin, and is also the name of an extremely violent flash cartoon based on the same song, made by David Firth.
  • 'The Milkman of the human kindness' is also a title of a song by Billy Bragg.
  • Before becoming famous, Benny Hill worked as a milkman.
  • For many years, the WNEW radio station carried an overnight Big Band broadcast called "The Milkman's Matinee".
  • Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman is a comic book character created by David Boswell.
  • Milkmen is also a term given to males that lactate and could potentially breast feed. See male lactation.
  • Milkman & Cakeboy vs. Dracula in Dodgeball is a short, fiction/comedy story written by Aiman Alramahi & Maher Yassin.
  • Aphex Twin wrote a track called "Milkman", which contains the refrain, "I want some milk from the milkman's wife's tits".
Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.