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The World of DFA Milk Haulers (continued)
 When Andy Guenther established the family milking business 82 years ago in Ohio, transportation was radically different than today. |
After sealing the tanker and recording the seal numbers, the hauler’s next stop is the
processing plant. Wallace says plants in the Mideast Area strive to get each tanker
unloaded within a two-hour window of the scheduled appointment time. The gross
weight of each truck is recorded as it enters, and the tare weight (the unloaded weight)
recorded before it leaves. While they’re waiting for their tankers to be unloaded, cleaned,
sanitized, and sealed with a wash tag, the drivers deliver the samples to a refrigerator in
the receiving area, where they are collected by couriers for delivery to a central laboratory.
How the job has changed
For companies like Guenther and Sons Inc., a family-owned business and DFA partner
that hauls milk within a three-hour radius of Cincinnati, Ohio, the national trend toward
increasingly larger dairies has meant big changes in how they do business. Established in
1926 by “Grandpa Andy” Guenther, this Ross, Ohio-based company is today owned by
the third generation of Guenthers – Jim, Steve, Glen and Gary – and by Jim’s son, Andy.
Glen’s sons, Brent and Marcus, also are involved in driving and support roles.
“We’ve grown from milk cans to semis in the 81 years since our grandfather, Andy, began picking up cans of milk at family farms with a single truck,” says Gary Guenther, who performs the central dispatch function for the company and still drives a milk truck from time to time. “Today we have 31 full-time and part-time drivers who collect milk from 43 different dairy operations, and we deliver to as many as 25 fluid milk, cheese and yogurt plants.
“Our customer base has also changed,” Guenther says. “In the early 1980s, our company made pick-ups at 130 farms, which produced 10 straight truckloads of milk per day. Today, we’re still transporting about the same volume of milk, but our customers now range from traditional family dairy farms, where we may stop every other day to pick up an average of about 5,000 pounds of milk per stop, to large operations where we may fill anywhere from one to three trucks each day of the week.”
Besides visiting fewer farms, Guenther says he’s seen the milk hauler’s work change from being physically demanding to being more mentally challenging.