NORTH RIDGEVILLE — When Joseph Laubenthal first began getting up before dawn every day to deliver milk from farms to dairies, Congress was giving the OK to spend $32 million to keep people from drinking something else — booze.

The year was 1928, and the millions that went to enforcing Prohibition ultimately kept about as many people away from alcohol as youngsters from milk.

When Laubenthal’s grandson, William, climbs up into the cab of his gleaming $140,000 truck before sunrise today, it’ll be his last milk run. At age 65, he’s calling it quits and closing the book on a three-generation legacy.

“For 80 years, people have seen Laubenthal Milk Cartage trucks go up and down this road,” William Laubenthal said.

It’s been a ritual broken but once by the very worst Mother Nature could dish out.

“We ran seven days a week, 365 days a week,” he said. “There were no days off. That milk had to be delivered. Farmers depended on us because their tanks had to be emptied every day, and the dairies were waiting on us, too.”

Laubenthal reflected on 48 years in the business as he sat at a patio table one day last week with his wife, Janet, while gazing over at his massive, 6,000-gallon-tank truck parked inside the super-sized shed that has housed several vehicles over the years.

“Christmas, Thanksgiving … it didn’t matter. We even planned my mom’s funeral around the milk business,’’ he said. “Sometimes I was really sick but got in that truck and went anyway.”

The lone exception was the notorious blizzard of 1978 that left him marooned for three days on a dairy farm in Spencer.   

He and his wife have five children, and Laubenthal missed his oldest daughter’s 1985 graduation from Ohio State.

“Brenda never forgot that,” he said. “I couldn’t find a driver to take over for me that day. My kids disowned me. Now there’ll be time for going places and being with them.”

Some of his happiest memories were of himself, his dad, Otto, and older brother Dick — best known as the funeral director-owner of Elyria’s Bauer-Laubenthal Funeral Home — heading off to work after attending 6 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Church.

“It was great to work with my dad and brother,” he said.

Father and son worked side by side until Otto retired in 1979. Otto died at age 88 in 2000.

Dick Laubenthal remained with the business until the early 1960s, when — during what should have been a routine run — he was struck head-on by a car on state Route 301 as he drove one of the family’s four or five small delivery trucks.

The accident killed the driver of the car and helped lead to Dick’s decision to leave the business, according to his younger brother.

Over the years, Bill Laubenthal’s 90-hour work weeks took him to dairy farms in Lorain, Ashland and Medina counties, but that daily grind gradually gave way to one truck making deliveries to a few dairies.

“Everyone kept saying, ‘You gotta slow down,’ ” he said.

A staunch work ethic instilled by his father and grandfather drove Laubenthal to spend lots of time and elbow grease on his vehicles.

“They’ve never spent a night outside. I’ve always had them in a heated garage. I always changed my own oil, did grease jobs and minor repairs,’’ he said. “My dad always said ‘You’re not hauling oil or gas, you’re carrying food in that truck.’ It’s a sense of pride.”

His current truck, a 2003 model with 195,000 miles on the odometer, will be sold to one of two remaining Northeast Ohio milk haulers operating in LaGrange and Wooster.

“They’re definitely a dying breed,” said Laubenthal of small, family-owned businesses like his. “Once they’re gone, they’re not coming back.”

Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.

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