Walmart sighting...

[RonL]

Not that I'm THAT old , but I remember the rag man came around with his horse driven wagon. He would put out a weight that the horse was tethered to. The produce vender would come around with his truck with the scale hanging off the back. Once a week the "gas" man would come around to wind up the clocks in the gas street lights and trim the wicks. There was a Clover Farm market around the corner that eventually succumbed to the "Super" markets. Wonder if the next generation will be reminiscing about Walmart.

RonL

 

[rockyridgefarm]

My grandparents used to buy vegetables and pickles from a guy in a wagon. Said he has 57 varieties of those pickles. I wonder what ever happened to him..?

 

[Lazy]

Hi
we still get milk delivery in glass bottles form Oberweis dairy. but it cost nearly twice as much as store bought milk

charlie

 

[Lazy]

Hi
But the milk in glass bottles is 3 times better 3 times better

 

[fivestring]

That's the one in Belmont that Belmont Abbey College is "sponsoring". The Belmont folks are really raising a ruckus over that one.
Everyone wants a Walmart but no one wants a Walmart in their neighborhood! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[AndyM]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Not that I'm THAT old , but I remember the rag man came around with his horse driven wagon. He would put out a weight that the horse was tethered to. The produce vender would come around with his truck with the scale hanging off the back. Once a week the "gas" man would come around to wind up the clocks in the gas street lights and trim the wicks. There was a Clover Farm market around the corner that eventually succumbed to the "Super" markets. Wonder if the next generation will be reminiscing about Walmart.
)</font>

How many people here have food delivered to their houses from the Schwan's truck? I see their trucks all over the place. The reasons people use the service are different now, but, like I said, it all comes and goes in cycles...

Schwan's Online Grocery Shopping and Home Food Delivery

 

[Bird]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( How many people here have food delivered to their houses from the Schwan's truck? )</font>

We haven't used them since we moved back to town, although I see their truck around here frequently. But when we were over 20 miles from the grocery store, we bought quite a bit from one of their trucks. As far as I'm concerned, good products but naturally a little expensive.

 

[Golfgar4]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( As far as I'm concerned, good products but naturally a little expensive. )</font>

You got that right Bird! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

We bought from Schwan's for quite a long time. As has been said many times on TBN, we were willing to pay a little more for a quality product and good service.

But then they changed the route guy. The new guy seemed O.K. at first. Maybe a little over eager, but hey, he was just starting, so I wrote that off to wanting to do well. One day I asked him if he knew why the last guy (who we really liked) had left our route. I thought maybe he got a promotion, or moved, or something like that. The new guy tells me that he was taken off the route because he wasn't a "company" man. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif He didn't offer any better explanation than that, and I couldn't get him to explain it.

Over the next few weeks, I talked with other neighbors who had Schwan's too. We slowly pieced together what we believed to be the real story. Apparently, the old route man was't a "company" man because he wouldn't put enough pressure on his customers to buy more product.

It was about this time that I started noticing a change in the new guy. When he would come to the door to check with us about an order, if we ordered some ice cream, and maybe some shrimp, and some of those microwave thingy's they sold, everything was fine. But we didn't always order every time. Sometimes we just didn't need anything. Well, one time when he came to the door, I thanked him for stopping, but explained that we didn't need anything this time. He got real huffy, and said (I'm paraphrasing here) "Well, why the heck am I stopping here wasting my time if you're not going to order anything?" Then he went on and "suggested" that if we didn't order anything, we might just not get visited anymore. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

Well, I bet you know what's coming now, don't you? /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif I looked him square in the eye, and asked him, "Is this what being a company man is all about? Because if it is, I think you won't be one for long because the company won't keep anyone around who doesn't have any customers! And that starts with me! Don't bother stopping here again"

Over the next couple of weeks, more and more of the neighbors sent the guy packing. Then about 6 months later, I was out mowing the lawn when a guy in a Schwan's pick-up truck (had never seen one of those before!) pulled up and stopped. He got out and walked up to me and asked if we could chat. Sure, I said. He was wondering exactly why we had quit buying from Schwan's. So, I told him - and I didn't mince any words either! /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif He said that that was the same story he was hearing all over the area. He aplogized for Schwan's, and told me that the first route man was being brought back to take over the route again. He asked if I would consider signing up again. I explained that if were just because the new route guy was a jerk, I might have considered it, because we did like the first guy. But I went on to say that I just wasn't going to support a business that encouraged the kind of techniques that were being used by their employees, even if the company had "seen the light" and tried to remedy the problems. It should never have happened in the first place, and they wouldn't be seeing our business ever again. He did thank me for my honesty and then left. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[BXMMCC]

And to this day it still puzzles me - all the vendors with their horse drawn wagons had steel rimmed wooden spoked wheels EXCEPT for the Friehofer bread man - he had rubber tires on his wagon that looked like auto tires! You'd think the milk man with bottles would've been first.

What was impressive were the ash wagon horses - big Percherons and Belgians whose hooves would make sparks on the cobblestones.

 

[fivestring]

I used them years ago but stopped for the same reason.
If I don't need anything, I won't buy anything.
I haven't seen a Schwan's truck around here in at least 6-8 months.