How It Started

 

My father Michael Hale bought his first milk round in 1961 which covered parts of Gloucester, he continued delivering this round for a further 20 years until in 1981 he sold it to Northern Dairies which was based on the Dairy Crest site which is currently along Eastern Avenue, Gloucester. At this time he also bought the part of the round that I deliver now, covering Sandhurst, Norton, Down Hatherley and Twigworth.

 

He continued this round for just over 20 years, until he had to give up in 2003 due to ill health. At which point I took on overall responsibility for the milk round, as I had been helping out at weekend’s and school holiday’s since I was 12 I knew the round quite well.

 

In April 2008 I was able to expand the milk round by taking on deliveries in Staverton and parts of Churchdown, at which point I also computerised the rounds books and invoicing. This enables me now to offer fully itemised billing, and has cut a lot of the paper work I was previously doing on a daily basis.
 
In September 2012, I bought out another local independent Milkman 'Tim Cole', whose milk round was based in Elmbridge
 
In October 2013, I changed my milk supplier to "COTTESWOLD DAIRY" in order to maintain a high standard of products supplied with the added advantage of all milk processed is sourced from a 30 mile radius of their Tewksbury processing plant.
 
Since Blue Planet II was first aired in December 2017 and the waste plastic problem was brought to the forefront of peoples minds, there has been a marked increase in enquires by existing customers wishing to change their order from milk in plastic bottles to the Traditional Reusable Glass Bottles, this combined with a significant number of new customers wishing to start having a delivery in Glass Bottles, has meant that now we are selling a much larger proportion of our milk in this way.