1940 Era DeKalb
Milk Wagon
Rutter’s Dairy owns an older milk wagon that was used in the 1910’s to the 1920’s. It has high wooden spoke wheels with a steel band around the wheel ring. This caused the milk wagon to have a very rough ride when being pulled around on hard surface roads because there was no flexibility in the wooden wheel compared to a rubber tire. My desire was to find a rubber tire milk wagon to pull over hard roads. This also gives me a chance to show the difference between the two designs of the milk wagons.
This milk wagon was originally owned and operated by Goshen Dairy of New Philadelphia, Ohio. It was in use to deliver milk to their customers until 1973. They had four of these rubber tire milk wagons that were sold at a sale in 2003.
The body of this wagon is set on a frame of a DeKalb Farm Wagon frame. It is a very strong and durable metal frame. At this time, we just cleaned and repainted the wheels and frame work of the milk wagon, installed new rubber tires and kept the interior and exterior of the milk wagon as I bought it from Goshen Dairy.