100 Years Back: Door Delivery Makes a Comeback

Side view of the City Bakery horse drawn delivery wagon. R. W. Scott, proprietor, stands beside the horse and Mrs. Scott and a dog are sitting on the carriage seat. 1914
Photo Courtesy the Galt Museum & Archives, 19871142010

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our everyday routines increasing the number of people using home delivery services. This change appears to offer a glimpse into the future, except that we already experienced a dramatic experiment with home delivery in Lethbridge a century ago. According to the book "Lethbridge: A Centennial History," the city's traffic in the 1920s was dominated by delivery vehicles. The difference is that these deliveries were not generally spur-of-the-moment orders; they were regularly scheduled.

The first on the road in the mornings was the milk delivery. The deliverers took orders, collected money from the empty bottles, and left fresh milk and dairy products. Then came the bakery van that delivered fresh bread and baked goods, followed by the mail carrier who delivered mail twice per day. Other deliveries that showed up on schedule in Lethbridge included at different times vendors, like a Chinese market gardener with organic produce, and a fruit wagon with produce from British Columbia.

With these regularly scheduled deliveries, it appears that those well-off enough to afford these services could run their households with little pressure to go out. If they needed anything else, they only needed to phone it in and make delivery arrangements. Advertisements placed in the Lethbridge Herald at the time show that several local businesses offered "free delivery." Not just grocery stores but also meat markets, flower shops, drugstores and others.

Technology spurred this trend. Telephones were becoming commonplace in urban households, and businesses were buying motorized trucks as commercial vehicles. The process of shopping for all the various items required residents to pick up different items and foods at stores scattered across the city's downtown. Door delivery simplified that time-consuming task considerably.

Social trends usually have similar antecedents. Door delivery is yet another example of an earlier adaptation making a comeback under different circumstances fueled by new technology.

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