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| T-rowe, just my two cents. For 40 years I saw dairymen get bigger from being picked up with a two ton truck to super tankers. I saw dairymen that refused to just improve their driveway to get a super tanker in. I've seen dairymen refuse to clean snow out so truck could get in. A lot of dairymen were and are their own worst enemy.
Before I quit milking my milk hauler offered to haul gravel into a dairymen for free if the dairy would just buy the gravel. The trucker owned belly dumps and grain trailers. All the dairy had to do was spread and pay for gravel. He wouldn't do it to help get tanker in.
I could see early on I had to help truckers get into my place our processors wasn't going to pick my milk up. I tore fence out, graveled road in. No backing up, just a big loop. We even graveled a spot for easy hook up of pup when they pulled pup. They had to unhook at our place so they could pick up neighbors that refused to fix their driveways.
When they had to go to super tankers, they quit picking those guys up because you couldn't get into the places. Especially when they wouldn't push snow. I had one neighbor that shipped a tanker a day that refused to clean drive for them. The last ten years I milked, they needed to pick up at 4 a.m. so lots of time I would have to open up 3 miles of county road to get milk tanker in. Our county wouldn't even put plow on our road until school bus came around at 6 a.m.
Lots of time bus ran before plow. We adjusted milking time to jist have it cool at 4 a.m. pickup. However I do agree milk hauling into private plants is monopoly, you have to be born into or married into it. But that's not all bad, our trucker was consistent, on time and never any crap. They had a route and had basically had to buy the route. My truckers dad was one of the first guys to haul milk for our plant when they started up in business. So his boys had first right to put trucks on. They were protected, because they helped build the business.
Before I quit milking the last son sold his route to another trucker who also hauled milk to that plant to put his boys all in trucks. It was a family affair, but they all did us a great job. | |
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Over flowing the milk tank question?
