The milk delivery trucks were manned by three employees. The driver and his two turnboys. These were strongly built young men in their 20s or early 30s. The turnboys did the hard job of loading the milk cans onto the bed of the truck which is fairly high off the ground. One man stood on the bed of the truck to receive the milk cans, while his partner lifted the milk cans from the ground and handed them to the loader. These strong young men did that job at record speed, it was amazing. They had no time to waste.
The moment the truck pulled up at our center, they quickly jumped out of the cabin, one dropped the back door of the truck and climbed on the bed ready to receive the milk cans. His partner on the ground started hefting the 50 liter milk cans, one by one handing them to the loader. The loader slid the milk cans to the back of the truck bed, sometimes stacking milk cans on top of each other to leave enough room for the other milk cans they were yet to collect along their route. This was a well choreographed task, done with ease, they made it look easy. Each collection center had more than ten milk cans to load, yet, they did it in a matter of minutes and off they went.
I never thought much about those young men, but now when I look back, I admire and applaud their skill, speed and efficiency. There was never a drop of milk that spilled as they loaded those heavy milk cans on the truck. When they brought back the empty milk cans later in the afternoon, they dropped off the correct milk cans in their correct collection center. Considering they were manual laborers, I don’t think they had much education to boast of, yet they did their job right, every day of the week, from January to December.
Those are the unsung heroes of our time. We tend to elevate and celebrate politicians and people of wealth because they are “visible” and more recognizable. We forget such young men who did a great service to a new Settlement Scheme and I am sure they did not earn much money for those valuable services. Hats off to them wherever they are, and I hope they were able to raise good families with better opportunities than were available to them.
