When he was 18, Jim Burrows thought he would try his luck at sneaking his muddied truck into the Stanhope Dairy Co-operative factory to give it a wash down.
He was caught in the act by the milk collection manager.
“All sorts of thoughts were running through my head, I thought I was going to get a telling off,” Jim said.
What he didn’t know was that he was about to get offered a job and it would be the start of a fantastic 43-year career as a driver for the Stanhope factory.
“I started work the next day. It was 1950, and milk was collected off farms in 12-gallon cans — that’s roughly around 45 litres,” Jim said.
“I used to visit around 15 farms a day, and through September, October and November, it was sometimes twice a day.
“It was tiring — I drove out to the farms, and I had to lift the cans on to the back of the truck by myself. The truck could hold about 125 cans.
“When I arrived back at the factory after collection, I had to then unload the cans on to a belt, and the milk was tipped into a big vat.
“The cans were then washed, and we would deliver them back out to the farm so the farmer could use them again.”
About 1963, farmers started installing refrigerated vats on their farms and milk was collected and delivered to the factory in bulk milk tankers.
Jim — along with his brother Philip, who also worked at the Stanhope site — drove the very first bulk milk trucks for the factory.
He held many roles in the milk collection team right up until his retirement in 1993.
Today, milk collection looks a lot different, with bulk milk collected in tankers that can hold up to 45,000 litres of milk, and pumps and hoses make it less labour-intensive for the driver.
Fonterra Stanhope operations manager Steve Taylor said Jim’s father, brother, wife, daughters, nephew, son-in-law and grandchildren have all also worked at the factory.