The Fuller Brush company has once again switched hands recently. From what I've read the few salespeople that were still with the company before the switch are not likely to stay. Changes in profit/payments, products available, minimum orders etc. make it hard to earn much on the side. They owned Stanley Home Products as well and that division has been shut down (in America; overseas it is a different "owner").
Has-been Occupations
- Thread starter Macfrommichigan
- Start date
Muck jumpers (This is an old one.)
Iceman
Steam fitters & boiler makers (a few still around, but not anywhere near the numbers of the early 1900s)
Steam fitters & boiler makers (a few still around, but not anywhere near the numbers of the early 1900s)
I think their skillsets have been folded into the Plumbing trades. My best friend works commercial plumbing and they do a LOT of work with boilers still.
When I worked for Sara Lee in the 90's, we owned Fuller Brush. It was a mail order business and we sold some products in our outlet stores.
Elevator operator
Auto workers
Any occupation that deals with driving on public roadways. Cabbies, Uber/Lyft, Bus driver, Linehaul trucking. Not sure these will disappear in my lifetime, but certainly in my daughter's lifespan. I think that, once liability issues can be addressed, the process will take place fairly quickly. It is quite possible that personal ownership of vehicles will also be a thing of the past, too.
Plain ole guy....
Sure do. My brother and I had one in the mid 60's. Six days a week 150 customers @ .35 cents a week. Papers were on the driveway when we got home from school. We stuffed ads, folded and threw them from our bikes. Only broke one window in 3 years, but had allot go on the roof. We had to collect the money from the folks, the ole punch card system. Really the good old days....
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Car hops
TV repairmen
Furnature/chair makers
Bowling pin boys (gone for a while)
TV repairmen
Furnature/chair makers
Bowling pin boys (gone for a while)
An evening paper? Lucky guy.
An evening paper? Lucky guy.
I guess. We're supposed to have it on the porch by 5pm. Saturday 3pm. Very small town at that time "Kearney Daily Hub" (Nebr). Good memories. We used fruit boxes from the grocery store to hold the papers. They were wax covered and real strong. They fit perfectly in our news paper issued canvas bags then we wired the box and bag to the front handle and it sat on the front wheel fender. Oh, credit to my mom. She always started folding papers before we got home from school. Our hands were black from the ink when we finished. Thanks for the helping retrieve good memories...
Same here, from age 10-16. Really "cool" having to bolt home after class in high school do deliver the papers, while my friends "hung out". Six days a week, followed by 7 days in the last few years. collections were Thursday nights, followed by a Friday round to see if I could pick up the stragglers. Great grounding in the value of money, and of course the Christmas tips were a nice bonus. Probably had a peak of about 80 customers, and remember my Dad meeting me halfway through the route on Saturday mornings with the second load of papers. They were so thick they would not stack safely on the wagon I used. Dad would also come by on collection night at Christmas time to bring home the cards and cash, so that I was not carrying too much money around as a pre-teen.
I had an uncle that was a repairman for Sears. Primarily he worked on radios, TVs and the like. The last time I called a Sear's repairman to come look at a Kenmore dryer, all he did was hand me a coupon to purchase a new dryer at Sears. So repairmen have basically become salesmen.
I know one that repairs major appliances. There are instance where you're better off buying a replacement, especially if you can't find the parts. This is why we replaced a 30+ year old refrigerator.
I doubt logging truck drivers will disappear anytime soon because they go to places where there aren't any roads. Based on some GPS glitches I've seen, I don't think true autonomous driving vehicles are as close to reality as we might think.
I think Sonic still has car hops, but you place your order through something like what you see at a drive-through windows, just that you park beside it.
Cool! I have a nephew who works for Sarah Lee. Guess which bread we tend to buy.
I agree we've got a bit to go there. The initial changeover may be the most challenging point. I'm sure getting a car to the point of being autonomous and driving safely and legally is challenging enough without human drivers and thus human-error still getting thrown into the mix. Driving is such a dynamic situation for a number of reasons. There's also the "Trolley Problem" and ethical discussion over how computer controlled cars should react in life threatening situations, how they will interact with pedestrians, etc.
Between technical issues, moral issues, cost of development, and some degree of consumer hesitancy I don't think they'll be a self-driving car revolution anytime soon. I'm sure more safety and driving assist features will continue to find their way into cars in the meantime. Obviously this is my personal speculation, but you'd color me surprised if self-driving cars start to show up on the road in any real way before the mid 2030s.
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