Floating along
Excerpt from here from a now defunct blog:
Kirby and West's brightly painted electric milk floats are still a familiar sight around Leicester. The sound of a solid tyred float, with it's battery fuelled motor whining it's way up the street first thing in the morning is still a regular sound. Times have changed though, most folk buy their milk from the local mini-mart in plastic bottles and compared to yesterday, the milk float only stops at a small number of houses along the street; it's easier to pay the cashier in a shop using a debit card, than it is to await the milkman's Saturday morning knock on the front door and to have cash at the ready for weekly payments.
Kirby and West have been in business since 1861 and soon after developing into profitable dairy. In 1956, 17,000 gallons of milk were being processed daily. As late as 1980, new facilities capable of washing 24,000 bottles an hour being commissioned. In 2007 however, milk processing, bottling and carton filling was deemed unprofitable. Today the company still continues to supply dairy products and other goods to local communities and businesses.
One can imagine the daily hustle and bustle of the dairy business of yesteryear. Local farmers would milk the cows during the early hours and leave full churns on raised platforms outside their farms. The pickup lorry would arrive, load the churns and take them to the local rural railway station where they would be put in a steam hauled train enroute for Leicester. Pint sized bottles, after making their way around the dairy's washing plant, would be filled with cold pasteurised and sterilised milk, sealed with a top, deposited into crates and loaded onto the battery trucks. With a rattle and a chatter of bouncing bottles, the floats would make their way through the streets of the city and a milkman would chink the bottles as he brought them up the drive to place them on the doorstep. We remember the bottle tops pecked by the birds that loved to get the cream, or the cold mornings when the milk froze and pushed a tower of white ice out through the neck of the bottle. Yet for all this romantic thought, and despite feeling that it would be somewhat sad if the milk floats disappeared, we still prefer to make our dairy purchases elsewhere.
Registration: FBC72C
Make: KIRBY & WEST
Model: UNKNOWN
Cylinder capacity (cc): 0cc
Date of first registration: 10 December 1965
Year of manufacture: 1965
Description:
Fuel Type: Electric
CO2 (g/km): Not Available
Floating along
Excerpt from here from a now defunct blog:
Kirby and West's brightly painted electric milk floats are still a familiar sight around Leicester. The sound of a solid tyred float, with it's battery fuelled motor whining it's way up the street first thing in the morning is still a regular sound. Times have changed though, most folk buy their milk from the local mini-mart in plastic bottles and compared to yesterday, the milk float only stops at a small number of houses along the street; it's easier to pay the cashier in a shop using a debit card, than it is to await the milkman's Saturday morning knock on the front door and to have cash at the ready for weekly payments.
Kirby and West have been in business since 1861 and soon after developing into profitable dairy. In 1956, 17,000 gallons of milk were being processed daily. As late as 1980, new facilities capable of washing 24,000 bottles an hour being commissioned. In 2007 however, milk processing, bottling and carton filling was deemed unprofitable. Today the company still continues to supply dairy products and other goods to local communities and businesses.
One can imagine the daily hustle and bustle of the dairy business of yesteryear. Local farmers would milk the cows during the early hours and leave full churns on raised platforms outside their farms. The pickup lorry would arrive, load the churns and take them to the local rural railway station where they would be put in a steam hauled train enroute for Leicester. Pint sized bottles, after making their way around the dairy's washing plant, would be filled with cold pasteurised and sterilised milk, sealed with a top, deposited into crates and loaded onto the battery trucks. With a rattle and a chatter of bouncing bottles, the floats would make their way through the streets of the city and a milkman would chink the bottles as he brought them up the drive to place them on the doorstep. We remember the bottle tops pecked by the birds that loved to get the cream, or the cold mornings when the milk froze and pushed a tower of white ice out through the neck of the bottle. Yet for all this romantic thought, and despite feeling that it would be somewhat sad if the milk floats disappeared, we still prefer to make our dairy purchases elsewhere.
Registration: FBC72C
Make: KIRBY & WEST
Model: UNKNOWN
Cylinder capacity (cc): 0cc
Date of first registration: 10 December 1965
Year of manufacture: 1965
Description:
Fuel Type: Electric
CO2 (g/km): Not Available