The Modern Milkman
In early 2016, I was driving along the North Circular ring road in London when I hit traffic. Up to that point, the roads had been clear and smooth with no sign of a problem. Making my way to the front of the queue, I was greeted with a sight that I hadn't thought about for years; a traditional British battery-powered milk float.
On reaching my destination, I had to do a bit of digging and found very little on the picture galleries of the UK news agencies that recorded this random slice of quintessentially British life. Bingo!
It didn't take long to find out about Milk&More, a former wing of the Dairy Crest company until its purchase by Müller in late 2015. After a few conversations with the lovely people in their PR team, I got the go-ahead to set my alarm for stupid o'clock and hit the streets of Watford and Saint Albans.
My guide for the day wouldn't just be a milkman, oh no. I was getting none other than the "Milkman of the Year" Neil Garner. With a bottle delivery tally of around five million to his name, and 21 years at the creamy coalface, I knew I'd be in safe hands.
Sadly, however good Neil is, he couldn't do anything about the fact that it was going to be one hell of an early start. My shift started at 1:30am, as I arrived at the depot. Hopping on board the fully-charged churn-chariot, we hit the roads with the raw speed of a glacier. While the traditional floats can stay out of harm's way when heading downhill, a minor gradient is all it takes for progress to drop to the kind of speed where I felt like hopping out and giving it a push.
Once you get over the shock of the anti-speed, it's actually great fun. Nearly every attempt to take a long exposure from inside the cab was thwarted by the decidedly "interactive" suspension, and there are no heaters, but you're not there for comfort. It was quite similar in feel to my experiences on board some military helicopters; it's a basic no frills ride but it will go for decades.
For this assignment, I opted for fast prime lenses and shot 90% of the photos on the stunning Nikon 24mm f/1.4G ED AF-S lens, a lump of glass that is on the verge of becoming welded to my camera. It's wide enough to get the whole story but has that beautiful shallow depth of field and low light performance that allowed me to shoot in near total darkness at times. Paired with the Nikon D4s, it did the job perfectly.
Neil lived up to his title in every way, proving an exceptional guide and host, as I leapt in and out of the cab and generally got under his feet. Being jovial at that time of day takes some doing and while I could manage it in short bursts, it's a special someone who can keep it up. The shifts vary between around six and nine hours, depending on the volume of bottles to deliver, and take him all over the area. In years gone by when whole streets would order their dairy produce, it would be a case of just dealing with a very small area, but as orders have dropped off, the area he covers has grown. Milk&More has adapted to survive too, by allowing customers to order everything from milk to garden compost and toilet roll, all delivered in the dead of night by people like Neil.
As my silver-top taster of the unseen world of the milkman drew to a close, I was left filled with admiration for the people who work such harsh hours on a daily basis. As my brain began to fade and I headed home, I asked Neil how he survives it, to which he replied that he always gave himself a nice lay-in on his day off, staying in bed until 3am.
New customers can register and place orders through the Milk&More website.