Vintage photos....Awesome!

Courtesy of the Charles Cushman Foundation

Click to expand...

Courtesy of the Charles Cushman Foundation

Click to expand...

Driving a 1925 Divco milk truck can be a challenge. The truck was designed to be driven while the milk man stands on the outside of the truck. This was done to make it easier to hop off the truck to make a delivery. The gear shift is in front of the pedals that control cluch and brake. While standing on the outside of the truck, the driver must reach inside the truck to a tiller bar to steer the truck left and right.

Click to expand...

The truck has two driving positions. A delivery person would first drive the truck to the route while standing in the front of the truck. After arriving, the driver would move to the side where the truck could be driven using a tiller and standing pedals. Here, Crist demonstrates how to drive using the side controls of the 1925 Divco milk truck.

Click to expand...

One model Crist owns, a 1936 Thorne gas/electric stand-and-drive delivery truck, was used by Rutter's for 18 years before it was sold to Ruhl's bakery in Harrisburg. Crist later located the truck behind a chicken shed in Elizabethville and set out to restore it.
"A lot of innovation took place in the '30s," Crist said.
The Thorne uses a generator bolted to the fly-
wheel that powers a motor connected to the differential. This was an up-and-coming mode of driving wheels of diesel locomotives that began replacing steam engines for railroad hauling in the 1940s. In the case of diesel locomotives, where huge loads needed to be moved, it was not practical to use friction-drive-type drivelines with their clutches, gears and drive shafts.
For the Thorne, the gasoline-electric drive motor, kept the process of driving simple. It was also superior to a clutch on steep grades when a lot of torque and slow speeds were needed.
An old advertisement in Crist's collection for a Divco stand-and-drive milk truck reads that it cost 90 cents a day for a horse and only 35 cents a day to run a Divco truck, without all the noise, manure and 24-hour care.
Home delivery of milk went into decline as more women began to work and the supermarket took over supplying milk to consumers.
Crist estimated that it took more than 19 men driving 16 trucks to deliver milk to homes throughout York County. In contrast, it takes just one tractor-trailer to deliver to a grocery store. So, companies decided it was no longer economically feasible to deliver milk to the home.
Crist went on to say "supermarkets came out and were selling milk so cheap compared to what you could deliver it . . . and more and more ladies working, that is two people in one family working, they weren't home to receive the milk."
In October 1993, after the last driver retired, Rutter's disbanded its fleet of home-delivery trucks.

Click to expand...