350 CITY MILK SUPPLY 



While the single central-delivery system looks very attractive, its 

 practicability is not unchallenged. The objections raised to it by milk 

 dealers of New England are set forth in the Boston Chamber of Commerce 

 report of 1915. They are that there would be: (1) Loss in teams and 

 trucks, for each company would have to maintain motor trucks or teams 

 to carry its product to the central delivery plant which vehicles would 

 be idle the greater part of the day. (2) There would be difficulty in 

 stacking the load, for it would be impossible to load the delivery truck 

 in such a way that the several brands of milk and the various-sized bottles 

 of the different dealers could be handled with celerity. (3) Only by 

 giving advance orders could the customer obtain extra milk since it 

 would be impossible for the wagon to carry a surplus supply of all dealers. 

 (4) The loss in bottles would be greatly increased as no one would take 

 as keen an interest in the recovery of bottles as the present drivers or 

 salesmen do. (5) The drivers solicit trade, collect bills and look after 

 bottles, but under a central-station system each dealer would have to hire 

 one or more men to attend to these things. (6) The cost of advertising 

 would be increased because the advertising that each dealer now gets 

 from his own delivery wagon would be eliminated. 



There are three ways in which a central-delivery system might be 

 operated, namely: (1) by the producers on a cooperative system; (2) by 

 dealers as a joint stock company; and (3) as a municipally owned plant. 

 There have been but few central-delivery systems operated in the United 

 States so that conclusions cannot be drawn from practice but such at- 

 tempts as have been made at operating them have not been long-lived. 

 Producers as a rule lack in experience and have strong individualistic 

 tendencies so that they are liable to losses from mismanagement and the 

 tendency of members of the cooperative association to break away and 

 strike out for themselves. At Topeka, Kan., for example, the Producers 

 Creamery Co. went to the wall after a brief existence. In some small 

 cities as DeKalb, 111., Kalamazoo, Mich., and Lawrence, Kan., private 

 companies for a time have been practically the sole distributors and have 

 been able to render efficient service at low cost but such companies as a 

 rule lack stability for some stockholder or outsider sees a chance for a 

 bigger profit and starts competition. The nearest approach to privately 

 operated single plants are those of the big metropolitan dealers of which 

 there are usually but two or three, certainly but few, and rarely only one 

 in a city. These large companies reduce but do not entirely eliminate 

 the loss that arises from numerous delivery wagons traversing the same 

 streets every morning. 



A municipally owned milk plant looks particularly attractive to the 

 small city where no one dealer has felt justified in'expending the capital 

 to erect and equip a modern plant for clarifying, pasteurizing, cooling 

 and bottling milk. It is felt that the city might do this and that an ex- 



