larger trucks or to rail tank cars for 

 completion of the trip, this will mean 

 that — with the elimination of the 

 traditional type of country receiv- 

 ing station — some other type of 

 transfer facility will be needed. Per- 

 haps this will be less expensive than 

 a country receiving station; but the 

 cost of handling milk at such a fa- 

 cility will need to be offset against 

 the saving of 25c per cwt. noted 

 above. 



The size of investment and the 

 conditions for the transfer of milk 

 at this transfer facility will depend in 

 part on health regulations prescribed 

 by various governments. The facility 

 would probably include a hot water 

 supply for cleaning the tank of the 

 assembly truck, plus a receiving 

 ramp under a roof. A holding tank 

 might be needed — not one large 

 enough to hold, all at one time, the 

 entire supply of milk which passes 

 through the facility in one day, but 

 a tank large enough to avoid having 

 several assembly trucks either delay 

 or be delayed by an over-the-road 

 truck or a rail car, since in and out 

 movements can never be synchron- 

 ized perfectly. Furthermore, until a 

 satisfactory metering device for milk 

 can be developed, a man to suoer- 

 vise the milk transfer station might 

 be needed. Having such a man spend 

 part of his day in field work ("con- 

 tact work" with producers) or in 

 the testing of milk for bacteria count 

 and butterfat content could help to 

 keep down the operating cost of the 

 transfer facility. 



Hitherto, the country receiving sta- 

 tions have been a means of contact 

 between the dealer and his producers, 

 in addition to the dealer's having field 

 men who visit dairy farms to keep an 

 eye on sanitation, maintain satis- 

 factory relations with the producers, 

 and so on. A contact is needed by the 

 dealer if an adequate supply of sat- 

 isfactory milk is to be maintained. 

 With the elimination of the country 



receiving station, the dealer will need 

 to replace that form of contact — 

 perhaps through the personnel of the 

 transfer facilities or perhaps through 

 the tank trucker on the assembly 

 route, regardless of whether the lat- 

 ter man becomes an employee of the 

 dealer or is a self-employed trucker 

 who, in the contact work, is an agent 

 of the dealer. 



Testing of milk for bacteria count 

 and for butterfat content has been a 

 part of the service performed by the 

 country receiving station. Eliminat- 

 ing the country receiving station does 

 not eliminate the testing but merely 

 shifts its location, whether to a new 

 type of transfer facility or to the 

 processing plant or elsewhere. 



4. Receiving Milk in Cans 

 or in Bulk at Plants 



At the plant where milk is re- 

 ceived by the dealer from the assem- 

 bly trucks, there is — as noted above 

 - a saving of a substantial percent- 

 age of the cost of the receiving oper- 

 ation if the milk arrives in bulk in- 

 stead of arriving in cans. To name 

 one factor involved: the washing of 

 cans is more costly than washing a 

 tank on a truck. Another example of 

 the difference is in the amount of 

 labor involved in emptying cans or 

 in emptying a tank — a mainly hand- 

 labor operation versus the use of a 

 power-driven pump. 



Even when all milk pick-up at the 

 farm was in cans, milk moving from 

 a country receiving station to a pro- 

 cessing plant was in bulk. Only the 

 milk which moved directly from the 

 comparatively nearby farms to the 

 processing plant reached the latter 

 in cans. In any estimate of total 

 savings from bulk assembly, the sav- 

 ing from eliminating the country re- 

 ceiving plants should, of course, be 

 applied only to the volume of milk 

 which has moved through those 

 plants; and the saving from receiv- 

 ing milk in bulk should be applied 



48 



