Price of milk

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

I was just looking into the cost of a milkman, because the price of milk in shops has risen dramatically recently (I suspect the milkman price has too). Turns out the weekly cost of having our milk delivered by a milkman is almost twice that of buying it at Waitrose. That's not quite true, because of petrol coses, but I actually mostly can be bothered to walk to Tesco/Budgens, and therefore only drive (or have shopping delivered) when I need a lot anyway.

Comments

[eldar.livejournal.com]

The price of milk in supermarkets is approximately the same as doorstep delivery was 10-15 years ago. This is why doorstep deliveries went into decline. Don't forget that any price rises that the supermarkets have to pass on, the milkman will have to pass on as well and they may be steeper rises than the shops.

It is also a fallacy that electric milk floats are somehow "better for the environment":
- Do you realise just how much electricity they use? In general their batteries require charging for 12+ hours each day. Most dairies won't be hooked up to a wind turbine.
- Those batteries? Full of really, really, nasty stuff. Not to mention they require weekly top-offs with distilled water, and there's energy going into making that stuff (and delivering it!) as well.

[olithered.livejournal.com]

Maybe each milkfloat journey uses less energy than everyone going to the shops 3 times a week would?

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Not if we walk, surely?

[olithered.livejournal.com]

Do you always walk?

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

if it's just milk, then yes. If it's not just milk, then we'd be driving to the place where the milk is or having someone else drive from the place where the milk is anyway.

[eldar.livejournal.com]

That's probably true. It's also probably true that a large number of crimes have been prevented/detected due to the presence of a milkman in a (relatively) quiet vehicle.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in some quantification of your milk float slander :) I suspect they do fairly well compared to e.g. a 2L diesel van because they use no energy when stationary..

[eldar.livejournal.com]

My father owned an independent dairy for over twenty years; I was the de facto yard manager during the summer - which included basic maintenance of the fleet, which was mixed electric/diesel/petrol. Hence I have a pretty good working knowledge of batteries, chargers, etc.

However it's my father's opinion that milk floats aren't as green as they're made out to be* (and I guess he'd know, he would've got the electricity bills!)

* Except our milk floats were, quite literally, the greenest around. As in painted green.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Interesting - did you charge them during the day or at night? If they're quite expensive because of the electricity, why were they used? What happens to dead batteries (as you say, full of lead and sulphuric acid)?