🚛 Milk tanker

A milk tanker is a truck with a tank for carrying raw milk from farms to the dairy. The tank is made of stainless steel and covered with insulation. Like a vacuum flask, it does not cool the milk by itself but keeps the cold in: milk chilled on the farm to +4 °C barely warms up during the trip. Inside, the tank is split into compartments or fitted with baffles. This way the milk sloshes less: sloshing mixes air into it and makes the truck less stable.

The driver connects a hose to the farm's tank, and a pump transfers the milk. The tanker comes on a schedule, usually once a day or every other day, and visits several farms on one run. At the dairy, the truck is weighed or the milk is run through a flow meter. The tank must be easy to wash and disinfect.

Under EU rules, milk must be no warmer than 10 °C when delivered to the dairy. At the dairy it is cooled again to 4 °C. Small farms still use churns instead of a tanker. They are carried by car, bicycle or animal, or even on foot.