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I was, actually, nominally the registered owner of an ex Express Diaries milk float in the later part of the 1970s. At the time I was a member of our local Round Table, and as the chair of our fund raising committee one year I got volunteered to have the ex float, which was donated by the dairy to us, registered to me.
Up until when we got the float, we had used to tow around a "sleigh" with a Santa in it, for two weeks before Christmas raising money to buy food to creat hampers for those less fortunate than ourselves. However, the trailer had seen far better days and needed to be replaced, and also no member wanted to either drive around every evening for a fortnight towing it, or was prepared to let others take turns.
So, somebody, possibly joking, said why not try and get an old milk float, encase the body and build a gable roof with a big chimney so that Father Christmas could stick out the top of the chimney and wave to all and sundry. And that's what we did; built the house on it, and fixed speakers on to it to play carols from. The only problem was that on the first night out with it, it ran out of power before we got it back to the industrial shed where we stored it, courtesy of a local builder. So we had to install the charger inside the house in case it happened again, and alter it to work on single phase rather than the triple phase.
And when I "retired" from the Round Table in 1988 it was still going strong, with just one change of batteries by and courtesy of Express during that time.
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