Trucking Along

I think it was 1954, but I’m not positive.  Mort Backus decided to quit the milk route he had been running, and he started a used car business.  My brother Bert bought the truck and milk route from Mort, and in addition to running a dairy farm, he began the tedious job of hauling milk from dairy farms to the milk plant in town.  It was a seven day a week job, rain or shine, hot or cold, but then so too was farming.  Like the mail, that milk had to go to the plant every day.

Bert soon found that running a milk route, with its repair and upkeep costs added to day to day expenses, was just about a break-even endeavor, and if he was to enjoy a profit it had to be from using the truck in some other manner in addition to the primary job.  This brings us to the moving business.

Bert started to take on an occasional job of moving people from one home to another.  He would normally take a fairly long hard look at the household belongings, take into consideration the distance to travel, account for our time, (I was his helper) and quote a job price to the homeowner, take it or leave it.

One day a little old lady stopped us on a street in town, and asked what Bert would charge to move her several blocks away, right in town.  Without leaving his seat in the truck, Bert noted it was a very small bungalow, quoted her $100, and offered to do the job the next day.  The lady accepted.

After milking the cattle the next morning, then running the milk route, we pulled up to the house to begin the quick-money good-profit moving job.  The house had a cellar.  Bert had not noticed that.  That cellar was packed almost solid with glass bottle canned goods.  We had to carry those bottles a couple or three at a time from that cellar, up a set of narrow stairs to the truck, place them where they wouldn’t get broke, and then another trip, and another, and another.  We managed one trip across town that day, and didn’t even finish the cellar.

The second day we finished the cellar, and started on the birds.  Yes, the little old lady had rooms full of birds in cages.  One or two at a time for hours we removed them to the truck.  One more truckload that afternoon.  Then a flying (pun intended) trip across town to spend some more hours unloading the squawking menagerie, as well as the remainder of those blasted bottles of pickles, beans, and whatever.

On the third day it was back for finishing the one-day easy $100. job.  That was the day we had to recruit help to move the piano.  As we pulled away from the new home for the third, and last, time, Bert turned in the seat, and said to me, “If I ever decide to take a job again without looking at it, I want you to kick me right square in the ass,” and with that we laughed off and on all the way home.