Sep 23, 2006 — After retiring from a long career with Rutter's in 2000, Jay Crist, of Manchester Township, came to the conclusion that people under the age of 45 hadn't experienced home-milk delivery and didn't know much about home milk delivery and the innovative machines that perfected the art in the early-20th century. Crist, a collector of antique vehicles, restores stand-and-drive milk delivery trucks. He started working in the Rutter's ice cream parlor in 10th grade. Eventually, he worked his way through the company taking on different jobs. Now he says he is having fun reliving his mechanical interest in the company and trying to preserve them for future generations. He takes his trucks on the road to answer questions about a service that has faded into the past.

The concept of stand-and-drive trucks allowed milk men to drive the truck while standing up, using simple controls, while quickly accessing their supply of milk bottles and delivering them to the door of a home in one efficient cycle.

One model Crist owns, a 1936 Thorne gas/electric stand-and-drive delivery truck, was used by Rutter's for 18 years before it was sold to Ruhl's bakery in Harrisburg. Crist later located the truck behind a chicken shed in Elizabethville and set out to restore it.

"A lot of innovation took place in the '30s," Crist said.

The Thorne uses a generator bolted to the fly-

wheel that powers a motor connected to the differential. This was

an up-and-coming mode of driving wheels of diesel locomotives that began replacing steam engines for railroad hauling in the 1940s. In the case of diesel locomotives, where huge loads needed to be moved, it was not practical to use friction-drive-type drivelines with their clutches, gears and drive shafts.

For the Thorne, the gasoline-electric drive motor, kept the process of driving simple. It was also superior to a clutch on steep grades when a lot of torque and slow speeds were needed.

An old advertisement in Crist's collection for a Divco stand-and-drive milk truck reads that it cost 90 cents a day for a horse and only 35 cents a day to run a Divco truck, without all the noise, manure and 24-hour care.

Home delivery of milk went into decline as more women began to work and the supermarket took over supplying milk to consumers.

Crist estimated that it took more than 19 men driving 16 trucks to deliver milk to homes throughout York County. In contrast, it takes just one tractor-trailer to deliver to a grocery store. So, companies decided it was no longer economically feasible to deliver milk to the home.

Crist went on to say "supermarkets came out and were selling milk so cheap compared to what you could deliver it . . . and more and more ladies working, that is two people in one family working, they weren't home to receive the milk."

In October 1993, after the last driver retired, Rutter's disbanded its fleet of home-delivery trucks.