As a college student on summer vacation I was on the front line of the “milkman wars” when I solicited accounts door-to-door for Carnation Co. home delivery. Using our own transportation, we shadowed delivery trucks from the Erie Dairy and Arden Farms, writing down the addresses of their customers. Then we would followup, knocking on their customers’ doors and trying to get them to switch to Carnation home delivery. It was a dirty business. The Erie Dairy driver was not amused and who could blame him.
I think we were a public nuisance and the police were called. I was conspicuous driving dad’s red and white Olds 88. I made friends with the other boy “salesmen” and our leader was a mature man who told off color jokes on breaks.
A very notorious experiment in capitalism, was my two months with Carnation. The cows were content but I wasn’t. I got the job through the state employment agency and I thought it would be better than selling shoes for Edison Bros. I was wrong.
Carnation sponsored “Burns and Allen” on KXLY/CBS on Thursday night and is famous for evaporated milk. Donald O’Connor and Jimmy Durante were in the U-I musical comedy, “The Milkman.”
(Darigold is the major Washington State dairy but I don’t think we tailed their drivers.)
