Mobile Shops

[Shearwater Missile]

When i was 21 i was a delivery man for. co-op bread.

My grandfather was a baker, his own business, taking the business over from his father. Up early in the morning to bake the first batch and then his brother went off in his I believe Morris van, on the local deliveries. These were to the local villages.
I can almost hear a Monty Python sketch with the 3 Yorkshiremen getting started here !

 

[Ming the Merciless]

My son has bright red hair.
No one else in the family has red hair.
A really strange coincidence is that the milk man had bright red hair.
That coincidence has always amazed me.

https://gingerparrot.co.uk/will-i-have-ginger-babies/

 

[PeteXXX]

And when the Rag & Bone man went past & his horse dropped a pile of 💩 in the road, people (my dad) used to go and collect it to put on the veg patch.. 👍

 

[postman]

My son has bright red hair.
No one else in the family has red hair.
A really strange coincidence is that the milk man had bright red hair.
That coincidence has always amazed me.

My mate told me a story last week.He said to his wife,there is a rumour going round the street.That the milkman has slept with every women except one in our street,she said i bet it's her at number five,stuck up cow she is.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Did you lot get brought up in areas where it was too dangerous to have shops. I was brought in Leeds in the 1950’s and I don’t think I ever saw a mobile shop or the like till I saw a mobile library on Midsomer Murders.😉

Nope, perfectly safe.

Mobile shops existed because:

Entrepreneurs where we lived foresaw a future where the customer was king (or queen) and eventually would expect to have home deliveries by default - think of it as a prescient trial run 60 years before mass implementation.

🙂

 

[glasgowcyclist]

We had the rag n bone ban. Dont remember the ginger lemonade though.

In Scotland, ginger is the generic name for all flavours of fizzy drink.

Irn Bru, cola, whatever, is known as ginger regardless of the flavour. Also known commonly as 'a bottle of skoosh', although I haven't heard that used for decades.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

Horse and cart when I were a kid.

We did too, but just for a couple of years and then he switched to a pale blue Commer van.

We also had the street sweeper guy from the council with a big cart he pulled along with a tiller. It was electric, thank f*ck, or he'd never have got to our place at the top of the hill.

 

[albion]

Mobile shops were killed off by Tesco and Asda vans.
Up until about 10 years ago they were still around villages.

Traditional Fish and Chip vans still tour.
Edit - Alpine pop vans I recall. Less cars around then !

 

[DRM]

https://ghostsigns.co.uk/2014/07/larkspur-restoration-by-brian-the-brush/
it was the Scott's Pop (Larkspur) deliveries round our way, also milkman with the old electric float, a proper Rag N Bone man, and a mobile knife sharpener, iirc they had an Italian name, also a shop in Leeds market, there was also a mobile shop as well, I'msure it was on of those huge box shaped Commer vans

 

[glasgowcyclist]

Mobile shops were killed off by Tesco and Asda vans.
Up until about 10 years ago they were still around villages.

Traditional Fish and Chip vans still tour.

Do you think so?

I thought they died out lo-o-ong before online supermarket deliveries were a thing. Certainly around here.

The increase in car ownership along with the provision of huge supermarkets killed them off. IMHO.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

There's one comes here weekly selling fish but has other goods too. Only she's been missing for a few weeks because of problems with her van.

Yes there is someone who sells fish locally every week at certain places, might even be the same person. I think they are from somewhere on the East Coast. Presumably they just drive around Scotland all week. 🤷‍♂️

Talking of which, we used to get fish from 'The Pittemweem Man' too (my Grandpa came to live with us for a while and absolutely INSISTED that it was the best fish in the history of the universe or something like that).

I think there are still mobile libraries in some areas too. And now we have mobile banks as they've closed so many high street branches.

In the Orkneys, staff from banks do (or did) fly to the different islands every day on the Inter - Island flights from Kirkwall.

I've also used mobile banks from time to time in places like Lochinver (also a mobile cinema that was in Lochinver once. We saw a film about Fishermen and Seals as well as Toy Story 4 (I think). It certainly attracted all the local kids anyway!).

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

We used to have a van that would pull up and serve things from time to time (as well as the Pittemweem fish van mentioned in my previous post).

But @annedonnelly, one thing I remember as a kid though, was people going round the doors selling packs of bacon from cooling bags (I seem to remember that they always appeared to have bags full of the stuff).
At the time, I just thought that it was normal, but now, it sounds a bit random, if not bizarre and it was possibly stolen from somewhere in hindsight anyway. 😆

Does anyone else remember bacon (or similar) being sold door - to - door?

 

[stephec]

The last time I saw one was in 2010 in Castlecomber, Co. Kilkenny.

We were stopping there for a week on holiday when a fish and chip van turned up, absolutely lovely.

 

[albion]

Do you think so?

I thought they died out lo-o-ong before online supermarket deliveries were a thing. Certainly around here.

The increase in car ownership along with the provision of huge supermarkets killed them off. IMHO.

Likely down to distances. The Yorkshire Dales still has its travelling chippy though.
Not cheap, but understandable.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Besides, we have several ones locally to us, like O2, EE, Vodaphone, etc

I'll get me coat...