Got Milk, Will Travel

Norman “Kap” Kaplan has seen nearly all the vicissitudes of life: birth and death, marriage and divorce, prosperity and bankruptcy.

For 18 years, the Alta Dena Dairy milkman has entered the homes and lives of families in the west San Fernando Valley, delivering a running commentary on life’s little quirks, while stocking refrigerators with dairy products.

“You get to a point in life when you say, ‘I’m not going to be a millionaire, so I might as well enjoy what I’m doing,’ ” the 66-year-old Simi Valley resident said. “People call me crazy, but I’m happy just delivering milk.”

And although Kaplan may not be the only old-style milkman around--he is one of 30 independent Alta Dena distributors based in Chatsworth--he must rank high among the most endearing.

His customer-first attitude is apparent as he picks up newspapers off walks, tosses biscuits to dogs and doles out ice cream to kids.

“I am very particular about my route,” he said of his territory in Woodland Hills and Hidden Hills. “I haven’t taken a vacation in 18 years because if I thought my customers weren’t being taken care of, I’d be worried.”

Kaplan works four days each week. He makes the bulk of his deliveries on Mondays and Tuesdays, he takes Wednesdays off, and makes smaller deliveries on Thursdays and Fridays.

He gets to work at 10:30 p.m., loads milk, cheese, ice cream, juice and eggs into a refrigerated truck and makes deliveries from midnight to 11 a.m. Then he returns to the dairy at noon, washes down the truck, goes home and sleeps from 6 to 9:30 p.m.

So why does he work so hard on less than four hours sleep?

“I think greed is the word for it,” he deadpanned.

“I don’t like a job where they tell you this is all you can make,” he said. “I want a job where my ability determines what I make.”

That’s why he accepted early retirement from his previous job as a home furnishings salesman.

“The day after I retired, I bought the truck and the route,” he said.

He had worked part time at the dairy filling ice cream orders while working in retail. As an independent distributor, he buys Alta Dena products wholesale and sells them from a truck he owns that is emblazoned with the dairy’s logo. He earns money--he’ll only admit to making a “comfortable” living--by building his own client list.

The Chatsworth-based Alta Dena workers deliver milk in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys as well as in eastern Ventura County and West Los Angeles.

Even though customers can run out to the nearest grocery store to buy any one of the 500 products Kaplan hauls in his timeworn truck, he says they want something more.

“People want someone to care about them,” he said. “They want something they can’t buy: personal service.”

At a time when customer service often involves automated answering services and drive-through windows, this deliveryman is a throwback to a time when customers were names and not numbers.

Over the years, he’s gotten to know his customers so well that he doesn’t hesitate to peer into their refrigerators to see if they’re low on milk, butter and juice.

And he knows more than just their milk-drinking habits.

There was the couple who divorced but continued to live in separate homes in Hidden Hills, giving Kaplan two customers instead of one. Then there was the family torn apart by drug addiction. What about the couple who fell on hard times and stiffed him for $50.

And then there are the children he has watched grow from toddlers into adults.

“When I first started serving you, Elana was 2 years old. Now, she’s 19,” he said to Sylvia Freeman while looking at a photograph hanging on a kitchen wall.

Freeman said she counts on Kaplan to be entertaining.

“He’s not just a milkman, he’s a member of the family,” she said. “He comes and he tells me a joke.”

And Kaplan’s jokes, which sound a lot better when he tells them, are nearly as popular as his products:

“What do you mean you don’t want any milk?” he said. “Don’t you know how hard it is to get the milk back into the cow?”

“The bride-to-be walks in and she sees her husband-to-be. . . .”

And then there’s the one about the constipated elephant . . . never mind.

OK, maybe they don’t sound that much better when he tells them. But he’s still hoping to make you smile.

“My customers,” he said, “have to have a sense of humor.”