As West Marton Dairy expanded it bought out small dairies to increase it’s allocation of milk from the MMB. They weren’t the only dairies doing this, the giants of the industry; United Dairies, Express, Clover and Associated Dairies at Leeds were doing the same thing. Associated Dairies eventually became ASDA the supermarket chain. This process of takeover and rationalisation began in the 1950s but its worst evils were mitigated by the fact that the MMB was still in control of milk production and distribution. Working under a benevolent policy from the Ministry of Agriculture Food and Fisheries who were promoting home food production in a time of financial stringency, the MMB maintained a fair, if not generous, price for liquid milk and the dairy farmers prospered. Indeed, the MMB started to take a greater role in the collection of milk from farms because it wanted to modernise the industry by going over from kit milk collection to bulk tanker which would be more efficient.
This change in policy meant the end of Harrison Brothers association with West Marton and quite suddenly I found myself running Harrison’s solitary wagon on general haulage. At first this was local work but as Billy Harrison started to struggle for work I found I was a tramp driver. I ran all over the country finding my own loads from clearing houses and doing the best job I could. It was a great education and I certainly saw the country but it was a hard life. I did about four years of this but finally cracked and called in to see David Peacock at West Marton to see if he could find me a driving job. I was quite surprised when he bit my hand off and I found myself driving for the dairy again.
I started back at the dairy driving a wagon delivering bottled milk. Early in the morning I went to Marton and loaded school milk for Settle and the Dales and spent four hours driving round some of the finest country in England delivering crates of third pint bottles of milk at the schools and picking up the empties. This practice dated from 1946 when Ellen Wilkinson the minister for education brought in the School Milk Act to ensure that all children, no matter how poor, got a free third of a pint of milk every school day. In these modern times we forget what a blessing free school milk was. I’ve always said that the best use for government money I could think of was buying milk to pour down children’s necks and stopping it in 1971 was a crime which only saved £9million a year. I still hold that opinion. In the afternoon I took a load of bottles out to one of the refrigerated depots. How many of you can remember that the small building in the corner of Gissing and Lonsdale’s yard on Valley Road was the West Marton depot for years. Later it was moved to the barn at the end of Vicarage Road. If I had a pound for every crate of milk I have delivered there I would be a wealthy man.
Shortly after I went back to the dairy there was a big change. In 1960 the dairy was bought by Associated Dairies and was switched over from bottling milk to cheese production. There were major building works to convert the dairy and while these were going on almost all the milk that was being brought into the dairy by MMB kit wagons was tanked out to dairies anywhere between Sanquar in Scotland to Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire. Just before Associated had taken over we had bought out a dairy near Preston called J E Hall and part of the transfer of assets was two AEC Mercury 2000 gallon tankers (9,000ltr). I was given one of these to play with and for the rest of my time with the dairy I loaded up in the afternoon and set off from home anytime after midnight to deliver at far-flung dairies in time for them to process the milk, bottle it and have it on the doorstep by the time people got up. A lovely clean job driving at the quietest time of the day and right up my street. I did this job until 1968 when I left the dairy to go to work for Richard Drinkall as his cattle wagon driver. I remember going to ask David Peacock’s blessing as I didn’t want him to think Richard had poached a driver. David said he was delighted and told me that if ever I wanted a job back at the dairy I should come to see him. Not a bad way to leave a firm! My best driving mates on the job were Danny Pateman and Alan Parker and we loved the job. If I remember right I never had a day off the whole time I was on tankers. Every afternoon was a holiday and I can remember that when Harry Addyman died and I called round to pick up Ted Lawson on our way to the funeral at East Marton his dog bit me. It was the first time it had ever seen me dressed in anything other than a boiler suit!
During my time working directly for the dairy the MMB still had control and I have to say they did a wonderful job. The distribution of milk was controlled from a small office in Newcastle under Lyne by two blokes one of whom was called Mr Bishop. I once called in there out of curiosity and the whole shebang was run by these two and a secretary out of a cubby hole of an office. Their job was to take in estimates of demand for milk the following day, relate this to the production figures for the current day and decide on the allocation of milk throughout the whole of the Midlands and North of England including some of the dairies in southern Scotland. Their priority was to make sure the liquid milk market had enough supplies and then allocate the rest to the manufacturing dairies. Many factors governed this calculation, time of year and weather decided production, holidays governed demand in industrial towns and seaside resorts. Available storage capacity in dairies had to be taken into account and all the answers depended on availability of transport. In spring particularly when there was a flush of milk as cattle went out to grass milk sometimes had to be tanked round the country simply to get it out of the dairies as they couldn’t hold the surplus. I remember once taking milk to a dairy on the same day that dairy tanked milk into Marton! We sometimes couldn’t see rhyme or reason in the movements but knew that there would be a good explanation for it if we knew all the facts. At one point in the early days of computerisation, it was decided that this could all be done by an early computer programme. This was duly installed and tried out but the result was a glorious cock-up and the MMB went back to Mr Bishop and his mate with telephones and a couple of sharp pencils! Reassuring!
SCG/14/06/09
Stanley’s AEC taker loaded ready for delivery at dawn next morning.
