Ford Transit MkII Milk Float

The Ford Transit Milk Float used the same cab casting as the wrecker with a plastic milk float body on the back. It is a Mk2 Transit as produced by Ford from 1977 to 1986.

This item was released in the days of much closer government control of the supply of the staples of life, A big chunk of the milk supply in the UK was under the control of the Milk Marketing Board, a Government agency. My dad was a dairy farmer at the time and the Dairy Crest truck (the branding of the Milk Marketing Board) came to the farm and took away the milk every day for which he was paid a government controlled price per gallon, so long as the milk was up to quality. Milk destined for doorstep delivery (how most people got their milk in those days) was pasteurised and bottled before being sold on to milk delivery businesses, mostly sole traders with their own van. We had our own milk round associated with the farm on which we sold our own untreated milk alongside the Dairy Crest pasteurised milk we bought back from the dairy (we used a Bedford CA van, in standard form, no specialist bodywork). The government also controlled the price at which we sold the milk to our customers. I remember that at the time of decimalisation (1971) of the currency we sold raw milk (green top) at one shilling a pint and pasteurised (silver top) at 11 pence halfpenny, that is 12 old pennies for green top and 11 and a half old pennies for silver top, about 5p in decimal coinage. I still remember the confusion that caused on collecting day when we had to make the change to decimal, as it did not exactly equate.

The first release of this truck was branded 'Dairy Crest' and you could buy one from your milkman. Quite a lot of diecasts from this period were sold this way by retailers, or given away when you had saved the right number of packet tops. When it went into core production the branding on the sides was changed from Dairy Crest to 'Milk's Gotta Lotta Bottle', the replacement slogan for the older 'Drinka Pinta Milka Day'. In those days milk was good for you. The Transit Milk Float (405) remained in production up to the Mettoy bankruptcy and returned in the post-Mettoy era, one example of which I show below.

I have seen mention of an all yellow version with suspension, but have never found one.