A day in the life of a modern milkman
Brian Fruzzetti has been delivering milk for Crescent Ridge Dairy for over 16 years.
[fragment number=0]
Brian Fruzzetti leaves his house each workday before 3 a.m. He skips breakfast, drinks some green tea, and by 4 a.m. he is on the dock, checking his orders and making sure he has enough milk loaded on his truck to get through the day’s deliveries. In the pale morning light, a copy of Pink Floyd’s Pulse, with the blinking red light, stands out on his dashboard. The truck has a CD player, but out of respect for the residents on his route, he mostly listens to sports talk radio quietly in the morning. It isn’t until after 8 a.m. that he turns on the music. It’s this kind of consideration that makes Fruzzetti and his colleagues at Crescent Ridge Dairy favorites with customers.
Fruzzetti has been delivering milk for Crescent Ridge, located in Sharon for over 16 years. What he originally took on as a stop-gap job while pondering a career in law enforcement has become his profession.
“You know, we still have customers that have been with us for 30, 40 years,’’ he says as he maneuvers his large refrigerated truck through the windy streets of Belmont. “I go into people’s houses. They are welcoming, if it’s hot out, ‘You want some water,’ that kind of stuff.’’
Story continues after gallery
[bdc-gallery id=”111361″]
Customer service seems second nature to Fruzzetti.
“Always grab the newspapers,’’ he says as he picks up a customer’s Boston Globe from his driveway. I don’t do it for any reason. I’m walking by it, so, I may as well grab it.’’
His milk truck is state of the art. It has to be to both protect the hundreds of pounds of milk in glass bottles and to keep those bottles cold. The freezer on board today reads a perfectly chilly 34 degrees. The milk is very fresh, and customers can taste the difference; Elena Poillucci of Watertown says that her children won’t drink milk at restaurants because they say it doesn’t taste as good as the milk from Crescent Ridge. That puts a smile on Fruzzetti’s face.
At about 6 a.m., like clockwork, or as he describes it, “like the movie Groundhog Day,’’ he arrives at a local Waltham pharmaceutical company with their weekly order. He grabs the keycard from his address book and walks into the building. An early morning office worker is standing next the Keurig, waiting for the precious milk to arrive for his morning cup of coffee.
“Happy Friday,’’ he says to the man as he tops off a small amount of milk from last week into a new fresh bottle. “See, it is like Groundhog Day. Every Friday he is here waiting for me to bring him his whole milk.’’
The man agrees, and Fruzzetti heads off to his next stop.
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com