Made a discovery this morning talking with my cousin, who mentioned the deliverymen/vendors in her neighborhood in Berwyn heights in the 1930. The family had one car, so when her father was at work her mother was dependent on walking or public transportation. The area was affluent enough (many UMd college professors and researchers at USDA Beltsville) so that it was worthwhile for trucks to sell meat and cheese, fruits and vegetables, and bakery (3 different trucks--she didn't mention milk which was even available in our more rural area in the 1940's but I assume they had it). I'm visualizing these as mobile farmers markets, though the milkman model would allow for advance orders, so maybe not.
I assume this was an evolution from the older horse-drawn vendors as the suburbs evolved from close in to car-mobile. And I'm guessing that as women went to work and had their own cars, the deliveryman/vendor model was no longer effective or economical.
Makes me muse on today's model--it's probably more efficient energy wise for groceries to deliver than for people to drive to the store. But people like the power to inspect and choose. So will the effect of the pandemic be to somewhat increase the miles driven by grocery/vendor deliveries and decrease the miles driven by consumers to stores?
[Update: found this link, not very descriptive though.]
[Update: a more informative link about horse-drawn wagons. Note: my cousin remembers the trucks as markets, not as delivery. Unlike the milkman where you could leave an order in the empty milk bottle.]
