Milk delivery thrives amid high gas prices

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) - The clock strikes 12 a.m. on a Friday, and the only light you can see comes from scattered street lamps and the 24-hour gas station down the block.

Most people are already in bed, but Jeremy Rapp starts his eight-hour workday just as the rest of the world starts winding down.

Rapp has been a delivery driver for Reed's Dairy for just more than a year.

"I do this two nights a week," Rapp said. "Friday would be my big day to come in about 11:30."

Surrounded by classic milk bottles and blocks of cheese, Rapp drives his route to fourteen hundred stops every week. Which he doesn't finish till 8:30 in the morning. But the delivery service has caught more attention as gas prices rise.

"They don't have to travel to the station, which saves them a lot of money on gas or travel, which is really important right now of the price of gas and fuel," Reed's Dairy president Alan Reed said. "So there's savings of not having to go to the grocery store, the convenience of having it right to their home and saving on that gas bill."

Reed's customer Beverly Clark grew up on a farm, where the milk came from her father's own cows. Clark hasn't driven in more than 10 years and requires a lot of help to get her weekly groceries.

"I don't do that very much walking either," Clarke said. "I got to the point where I have a friend that takes me the first of the month, and we go shopping and I have my shopping list and where I need to have done while I have a driver."

Costumers like Clark rely on Reed's for products like milk, cheese and orange juice. Reed's provides the last home delivery dairy service in the state of Idaho and one of the few left in the nation, which they've run for the last 60 years.

"We've been in the home delivery business since about 62, and so we've been delivering door to door since that time here in eastern Idaho. And then five years ago, we moved over to the Boise area," Reed said.