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Kōrero: Household services

A 1980s milkman

A milkman in shorts and socks, taking milk from his truck.

Wellington milkman Peter Julius in the early 1980s. This photograph accompanied a report in the Evening Post newspaper that the Hutt Milk Corporation chair, Lawrie Woodley, had called for milk vendors to smarten their image. He reportedly said that knobbly kneed vendors in shorts and sandshoes, and boys in football jerseys, were no longer acceptable.

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

Alexander Turnbull Library, Dominion Post Collection (PA-Group-00685)

Reference: EP/1982/1805/11a

by Ian Mackley

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

Ngā whakaahua me ngā rauemi katoa o tēnei kōrero

Me pēnei te tohu i te whārang

Jane Tolerton, Household services – Home deliveries, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/mi/photograph/21796/a-1980s-milkman (accessed 4 June 2026).

He kōrero nā Jane Tolerton, i tāngia i te 25 November 2009.

Comments

Grant Payton
22 July 2012
When I was a lad I worked on a milk run in the hills of Dunedin for 5 years. These were good times delivering milk to the gate in glass bottles. My record was holding 6 bottles at once which I regularly did to speed up the process and reduce the trips back to the truck or trolley. On one particular sunny Dunedin day I was delivering to a house in Tensing St at the top of a small rise. As I jumped off the truck tray a bottle clipped the side and fell out of my hand. Danny the driver saw my issue and jumped out to help me pick up the pieces. As we were doing this we notice the truck was rolling down the hill and tried to hold it back to no avail. To this day I remember Danny working his short little legs like never before and sprinting for the cab to steer the truck away from a bunch of kids playing in the street and steered it straight into a power pole. This saved the kids but wrecked the truck and the street was without power for a few hours. From memory no more bottles of milk were broken either! A replacement truck was found and the milk was delivered for the day. It sure was a quiet trip home that day.