Milkman’s relic humming around York County today
Paul Kuehnel of the York Daily Record/Sunday News has produced a video showing an operational old-time gas/electric Rutter’s Daily milk truck.
That truck, seen nowadays at the York Fair, aided in milk delivery years ago.
More recently, the last-known milkman to make deliveries in the York area was a Rutter’s route man, John Schwartz.
That came in 1994, after Schwartz had been making deliveries for 45 years.
Rutter’s opened its first convenience stores in York in 1968, the beginning of the end for home deliveries… .
That relegated the fleet of dairy trucks to museum pieces, such as the one Paul reported that Jay Crist was operating.
The Rutter’s story goes back to before York County’s founding. Rutter’s started west of the Susquehanna River in 1747.
Well, we’ll let this excerpt from “Never to be Forgotten” tell the rest:
Jacob Rutter and Nathaniel Lightner receive a 370-acre land grant in Manchester Township from the Penn proprietors. Today, a dairy farm operates on the same land, one of the oldest continuously operated family farms in America. Three Rutter brothers established a dairy in 1921 and started processing milk to sell.
The growing company opened its first convenience stores in York in 1968. The family expects to keep the land in the family. “Our fathers asked us not to sell the farmland,” Mike Rutter, an eighth-generation member of the family, said. “Maybe the cows won’t be here in due time, but I think the land will be here.”
