One Liverpool milkman who said the business was "in him from day one" has been doing the rounds in the city for over 50 years.
Generations ago, the area now known as Merseyside was home to both the historic Liverpool cowkeepers and hundreds of dairy owners, who sold milk to a rapidly expanding city population. As time went on, the modern milkman, as many came to know them, became a familiar sight on our Liverpool streets, with most households having fresh milk delivered to their doorstep as part of their everyday life.
Refrigeration and pasteurization soon became common place, and other factors such as the rise of supermarkets and the Milk Marketing Board coming into existence changed the way milkmen operate. But whilst a lot in the business has changed, milkmen are still working hard on their rounds to satisfy loyal and new customers in the region.
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Milkman Ray Mason, 63, has been in the industry for over half a century after first helping his dad with the family's milk business as a child. As part of the Liverpool ECHO's How It Used To Be series, we spoke to Ray, who grew up in Kensington, about his family history in the city and how life as a Liverpool milkman has changed through the decades.
Ray, who has a franchise round with Mortons Dairies, told the ECHO: "We used to have our own milk business back in the 1950s and 1960s. The business was called Mason’s Dairies and there were hundreds of dairies back then.
"It was a family run business, we had our own dairy as well on Florist Street down by where the university is now. We lived in one house and my grandma had the shop and the dairy next door to us and that went back to the early 30s, having cows on the field.
"My early days was me going out with my dad on a Saturday and a Sunday because it used to be a seven week job. When we moved to Kensington in 1965 my dad had to find another way to get his milk supplied to him and there were numerous companies and suppliers back then and he went with Hanson's dairies.
"He used to pick it up from Upper parliament street." Decades ago, Ray said the journey on the rounds were a lot different, from delivering the built-up flats and estates that are no longer with us to how the roads looked themselves.
Ray said: "The majority of the roads back then in the late 60s when I got involved were cobbled still, so it was a bumpy ride, regardless of where you sat. My dad used to buy his vans and it only had a driver's seat in it and it wouldn't have a passenger seat because it used to cost more money to have one put in, because it was a commercial vehicle.
"My brother used to sit on a milk crate with a cushion. One day my dad went round the corner and my brother flew out, that was one of his memories of it."
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A time when every neighbour knew each other and customers left their doors open, it's hard for some generations to imagine life without a refrigerator which was considered a luxury to many. Ray said: "Customers all wanted fresh milk everyday, they couldn't keep it anywhere.
"People used to have their larder in the kitchens and there would be a concrete slab and that was the cold shelf, that's where you used to keep your butter and your milk. Some of our customers used to leave buckets of water outside to leave the milk in to keep it cold through the summertime until they took it in, that was through the 60s and early 70s."
As a teenager, Ray's dad asked him what he wanted to do workwise after leaving school, to which Ray replied "I was hoping to stay with you." With four brothers and a sister who had all got involved at some point, Ray decided to continue in the trade and eventually take over the family business.
After Ray was injured in a crash in 1996, Mason's Dairies was sold and when Ray was able to return to work, the then manager gave him a job as a supervisor. Ray later found a franchise round in the Aigburth area which he has been doing for the past 20 years with Morton Dairies, who have delivered milk in glass bottles in Liverpool for nearly 100 years.
Ray has fond memories of his time as a milkman, from tourists stopping to take photos of the old floats to giving students lifts down Smithdown in the rain after nights out. Ray said: "It was massively different because back then, every person had milk delivered in the road and you would have three or maybe four milkmen delivering in the same roads due to the fact that you’d have different companies like Hanson's, Reece's and other dairymen.
"You would have something like six or seven roundsmen in a three-mile radius in comparison to now where you have one roundsmen in a five mile radius. That's how much it's declined over the years.
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Ray, like many other Merseyside milkmen, has seen a lot of change and will remember the days when supermarket culture first took off, the milk industry entered into the common market, when the Milk Marketing Board dissolved and when online orders began. Ray said: "Today, the younger generation don’t know milkmen still exist.
"When people say they get milk delivered, they’re getting them from Asda or Sainsbury's when they get their weekly shop. A lot of people don't realise we’re still out there putting in a big shift.
"When the pandemic hit, people panicked because they couldn't get out and they looked online and said hang on - there's a milk man here. I picked up over 150 new calls and other lads did as well, we were inundated.
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"I reckon I must have at least two thirds of those customers who went online." For over 20 years, Ray's round has seen him venture through Aigburth, starting at the cricket club and going as far as the Spire Liverpool Hospital.
He still has a group of customers in the middle of his round who purchase milk six times a week. Ray told the ECHO: "I wouldn't have done anything else.
"I couldn't do an office job, a nine to five, watching to clock. And the customers are good to me. It's been born and bred in me and even though I'm not carrying on the family business I feel as though they're all up there thinking at least he's still giving it a go, doing what we've all done in the past."
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