A collection of folk tales about milkmen, covering the history of the job and the milkman's everyday experience - delivering milk, collecting money, engaging with customers, dealing with dogs, coping with emergencies, and looking for opportunities (either with women or money).

'Please leave two pints today, please ring if note blows away'

In the milkman's heyday, the late sixties and early seventies, over 40,000 milkmen - occasionally milkwomen - were delivering milk to virtually every household. By 2014, however, only 4,000 milkmen remained, serving only a tenth of all households.

This book celebrates the daily working lives of milkmen, from their wake-up call in the middle of the night to their weary return home. Seventeen-year-old Danny Quigley intended to stay for just a fortnight when he started work in Londonderry in 1945, but was still a milkman over sixty years later, when an electric float had replaced his horse and cart. Alistair Maclean drove two million miles across the north of Scotland over fifty years. And award-winning Leicestershire milkman Tony Fowler helped to put over fifty criminals behind bars.
A milkman's life was one of early starts, worn-out boots, breakdowns - often enough in atrocious weather - amorous escapades (both real and imagined), dangerous animals and petty fiddles. The tale of the vanishing milkman is also one of price deregulation, improved refrigeration, the dissolution of the Milk Marketing Board, changing diets and traffic jams.