Electric Trucks by Kevin Desmond

Author:Kevin Desmond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2020-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

During the 1960s, Smith Electric Vehicles Ltd. linked up with Boyertown Auto Body Works and the Exide Division of the Electric Storage Battery of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in order to produce a state-of-the-art electric-powered route delivery truck called the Battronic (Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles).

The ultimate fate of Smith is told in a later chapter of this history.

Phoenix

In 1975, 94 percent of milk was put into glass bottles delivered from door-to-door. By 2012, door-to-door milk delivery had dropped to 4 percent. The inevitable decline had set in with the introduction of home refrigerators in the 1950s, along with the 1990s deregulation of the milk industry. Supermarkets started to sell cheap milk in plastic containers, and in 2014, it was announced that the British concern Dairy Crest’s last glass milk bottle plant was to close, no doubt starting a wave of nostalgia for a lost way of life. Some dairies in the UK, including Dairy Crest, had to modernize and replaced their electric milk floats with gasoline or diesel fuel-powered vehicles to speed up deliveries and thus increase profit.

At the time of writing, despite ongoing slumps in sales of cows’ milk, as people switch to nut, rice and soy options, the market for glass bottles of milk appears to be holding steady, and even slightly increasing. After Theresa May, the British prime minister, announced plans to scrap all avoidable plastic waste by 2042, milkmen are reporting an increase in interest for the traditional “pinta.” Dairy UK, which represents the milk industry, has stated doorstep deliveries of glass bottles are now around one million per day. Just two years ago the figure was estimated to be nearer 800,000. Mark Woodman, 56, who runs Woodman’s Dairy in Rumney, Cardiff, has recently spent thousands refurbishing his old milk float to meet the new demand, which he puts down to recent pledges to tackle plastic waste by the government and industry.

Patrick Müller has been investing a further £20 million in the UK and Ireland division of Milk&More business, headquartered in Chicago, revamping IT, upgrading machinery and—most visibly—rolling out a new fleet of more than 200 electric floats to replace many of the older diesel vehicles used on longer rural rounds. In May 2018, Milk&More further expanded its UK EV fleet with 200 new StreetScooter electric vans. These are already in use by Germany’s Deutsche Post, which operates 5,500 of those on its own. The StreetScooter has a 1-ton (1,000 kg) payload and a 9-yard (8 m) cube box, enabling Milk&More to carry 860 pints of milk at a time. The new floats have zero emissions and a range of up to 75 miles (120 km).

Patrick Müller, CEO of Milk&More, explains:

Our customers are at the heart of every decision we make and that includes our investment in the StreetScooter milk floats. As a business, we are committed to making this great British tradition relevant to 21st century consumers and therefore the delivery vehicles we use must also meet those needs. We are already seeing the results of

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