Bluster doesn't sell: Milking the Part

Reporter Corey Levitan fills a doorstep cooler with milk and other groceries from Winder Farms, which has been delivering to Summerlin residents since March. (The Utah-based company provides the cooler to each customer.) Photos by Gary Thompson. Real milkman Sean McCrady, left, pokes fun at Levitan's milk truck-driving skills. "You didn't know you were gonna be a tree trimmer today, too, did you?" he asks after his trainee takes a right turn too sharply. Like the milkman of yesteryear, Levitan gathers perishables from his truck's refrigerated cabin using a milk crate. The orders, however, are placed on the Web and forwarded to a PDA device. The first milkmen delivered in the 1850s, wearing white uniforms to advertise the cleanliness and purity of their product.

I ring the doorbell a second time, just like the movie said I would.

Today I'm a milkman, and I know this customer is home. She told the guard at Red Rock Country Club's western gate to let me in.

Oh, right. It's the postman who always rings twice. The milkman is the one who gets accused of resembling your kids.

I hear dainty footsteps. The doorknob creaks counterclockwise, slowly.

The milkman is staging a comeback in Las Vegas, where Sean McCrady delivers to 230 Summerlin residents. Winder Farms, which serves 24,000 customers in Utah, began operating here in March.

"Once we figure out the ropes and the challenges of doing this job in Vegas, we'll expand and go out to Henderson, Anthem and the Southwest," said McCrady, 31, who drives a different weekly route each day.

The first milkmen delivered in the 1850s, in white uniforms signifying the purity of their product. Since iceboxes were literally boxes filled with ice, milk couldn't always be kept long, so horse-pulled milk wagons serviced the same houses every day or two. The milkman entered and replaced old bottles with new ones. During the day, he was welcomed mostly by bored and lonely housewives.

Today, the last part of the tradition apparently continues.

"Last week, she was trying to think of things to ask me," said McCrady of the woman who lives here, "questions that you know she didn't care about."

Suddenly, I flashed back to the Sunnydale Farms dude my mom used to open the door to when I was a tyke in Oceanside, Long Island. Come to think of it, he was kind of short with a big nose, too.

"All the stories about the milkman are true," McCrady said. When pressed to elaborate, however, he mentioned something about a silent "milkman code."

"You never break the code, Corey," he said. "There is no talking -- kind of like the Vegas slogan. What happens to the milkman, stays with the milkman."

In Utah, Winder Farms (formerly Winder Dairy) has been delivering nonstop since 1880. But in most of America, the milk well went dry about 100 years later, because of the proliferation of convenience stores, nondairy creamers and QVC (for the bored and lonely housewives).

How college students managed, in the interim, to continue building milk-crate bookshelves and coffee tables remains a mystery as deep as whatever happened to my favorite band in college, the Dead Milkmen.

The milkman's double-decade Las Vegas hiatus probably explains why none of the guards this morning allow us through their gates without first copying down our license plate and then scanning the cabin for occupants donning turbans with fuses sticking out.

"They act like they're surprised to see you, every time you come," said McCrady, who has been driving the same routes for eight months, since he relocated from Ogen, Utah.

McCrady's job is a little different from what it was back when whole milk was good for you and red wine bad. Milk is only one of 100 different grocery products -- including soy milk -- stocked in the 44-degree cabin of his GMC 3500 truck. A Dell PDA provides all his orders -- entered and paid for on the Web -- directions and gate codes. And McCrady works in a green Winder Farms T-shirt (although I requested one of the old-fashioned uniforms the company still has on hand).

"I really like the job," said McCrady, who worked at a clothing store after high school, transitioning to car sales before applying at Winder. The company had no sales positions open, but did need drivers.

"I fell into it," he admitted. "But I like it because it's not too hard, and I have the rest of the day to play golf and kick it."

McCrady reports for work at 10 p.m. every night to load orders at Winder Farms' North Las Vegas warehouse. By 2 a.m., he hits the road for a shift that doesn't end until 8 a.m. (That's when deliveries are guaranteed by.)

"I only need about five hours sleep a night," McCrady explained.

Starting Winder Farms milkmen earn a base salary of about $1,500 a month, with a 4 percent commission for every order. (This serves as extra incentive not to lose customers because of inaccuracy or rudeness.)

"Hi," says the attractive woman who finally answers the door. I'll call her Jo Ann, because that's my girlfriend's name and maybe she'll be less upset when she reads this now.

I introduce myself as her new milkman, opening her doorstep cooler and making like Vanna White. Gracefully, I show off two gallons of whole milk, one half-gallon of 1 percent, a half-gallon of orange juice, grapes, carrots, broccoli, low-fat cottage cheese, vanilla and strawberry yogurt, and wheat and raisin bread.

Then I ask if she'd like to have her way with me.

Earlier, I asked McCrady what about the milkman appeals to women.

"They see you once a week, and they know you don't have to stay very long," he said. "So there's no attachment, but no matter what happens, you're coming back next week."

McCrady is married and says he has never cheated "and I never would." Still, he doesn't hate knowing that the opportunity is there, and sometimes knocks as loudly as he does.

"There are definitely some customers you run into that you have an extreme appreciation for," he said, "and some who have an extreme appreciation for you."

I offer to feed "Jo Ann" the grapes she ordered, but she's preoccupied with my entourage.

"Cameras?" she responds, blocking her face. "Great, I'm being recorded."

I reveal myself as a reporter, and she reveals herself as disappointed.

"I thought I was gonna win something," she says.

I inform her that my original offer is still open.

"Actually, if it was that milkman," she replies, pointing at McCrady.

What they say about milkmen is apparently all true -- when they aren't me.