From Loudoun County to Rockingham County Virginia

In 1933, Lee Foley Rust gave up being a farm laborer in Loudoun County to become a truck driver. He was only 19 years old, but he was ambitious and in 1936 he bought his first truck and hauled “whatever he could get on it”, from hay, to household goods, to livestock, and milk.

Milk hauling began with Foley in 1936 when he sub-contracted to haul milk in cans from farms in West Virginia to dairies in D.C. In 1941 he joined in partnership with Norwood “Cap” Hough and they bought out a canned milk hauling business from Mr. Henry Beatty of Purcellville, Virginia. Their new business was then named Loudoun Transfer and incorporated in 1954. The majority of business purchased from Mr. Beatty was in Loudoun and Fairfax counties. Soon farms were added in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

After a few years, Mr. Hough sold his half share to Jim Kelley, a local farmer and silent partner. Mr. Kelley sold to Mr. Harvey M. Ball, Jr. about 1952, who like Mr. Kelley, was a silent partner. In 1966, Clarence Jewell of Leesburg bought the general hauling business and the remaining became Loudoun Milk Transportation. Loudoun Truck Center was a separate partnership, but all operated from the same real estate from the early 1940’s to the present day.

The business first operated from a vacant field improved by the addition of a used truck body for storing tires and parts and an old D.C. transit bus used as an office. Tom Rust, Foley’s oldest son, tells of Dr. K. M. Oliver’s arrival in Purcellville as the new doctor one morning about 2 am. Seeing the lights on in the old bus (as Foley was still working) and thinking it was an all-night diner, he stopped for a cup of coffee but got to meet a tired Foley Rust instead, his first welcome to Purcellville.

By 1955, over 200 farms were being picked up in Loudoun, Fairfax, Fauquier, Clarke and the counties in the Shenandoah Valley from Winchester to Lexington, Virginia, 187 miles away. This number held fairly steady from 1955 – 1975 with farms going out of production in Fairfax and Loudoun counties, and going into production in the valley. More milk was hauled from 1955 – 1988 but there was a constant shifting of territory served. Currently, 117 farms are being serviced by Loudoun Milk Transportation. None are in Fairfax County, which lost its last dairy farm in 1990, and only one remains in Loudoun, this from a high of about 140 in 1960.

Tom Rust, who manages the milk transport part of the business, states that it can be a grueling and stressful business. He remembers that his dad never took a vacation. But Foley loved baseball so he would take his three sons to Washington senators’ games, leave them, drive back to Purcellville to check on his drivers and trucks, and then go back and pick them up.

Many a night Foley would sleep on a couch in his office because he just had to know that all his drivers were in and safe. During a Loudoun county snowstorm in the 1960’s, his phone rang off the hook as frantic farmers would call if their phone lines were up, to try to get that milk truck into the farm, even if it meant cutting wire fences and bringing the tankers in over the barren fields as most of the snow would be drifting into the roads.

The dairyman would work endless hours trying to scoop one lane of his road open with a tractor and front end scoop. After a heavy snow, December 12th, an entry from Robert James’ diary December 13, 1960 states: “got milk truck in through field – had everything full of milk; fighting the snow, roads drifted everywhere. Pouring milk out at Hillsboro farm”.

When they started hauling milk it was with a double-decker straight truck on which was loaded 10 gallon milk cans (86 lbs. each) stamped with initials of the farm. They were not refrigerated. In the winters of the 40’s and 50’s, some farmers would bring their cans to platforms at the end of their lanes; in summer, the trucks would pickup at the farm, take the chilled cans to D.C. dairies, empty, wash and reload them to return to the farm for the next trip. This was like the train’s route of stopping at rural platforms between Herndon and Purcellville, “especially on the morning milk train when 10 gallon cans of fresh milk would be exchanged for empty ones”.

In 1952, tanker trucks started to be used and in four years canned milk from farmers was non-existent. Milk was piped from the bulk tanks on the farm into the tanker trucks. Tom says that, as a business, they have been in and out of one Loudoun County farm every 48 hours (except blizzards) for 50 years (1941-1991) when Jim Brownell quit dairying at Whitehall farm.

In 1988 the two businesses were purchased by Mr. Rust’s three sons, Tom, Mike and Brian. Currently, they operate 27 tractor trailers (5,500-6,000 gallons) and 7 straight trucks (3,500-4000 gallons). Their business is:

65% - Milk hauling
25% - Semi-manufactured products hauling (cream, skim, condensed, etc.)
5% - Apple Juice
5% - Water (for bottling, for pools and portable for emergencies)

And today, they haul for 2 different co-ops, Cooperative Milk Producers, Valley of Virginia, and Maryland-Virginia Milk Producers Co-Op and also take milk orders from independent milk brokers, taking milk to Maryland, to Springfield, Lynchburg, Richmond, Newport News, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina among other places. Tom still puts in a long day arriving at 5:00 a.m. and leaving at 6:00 – 7:00 pm., but he delegates; something his dad couldn’t do in this 7 days/week, almost 24 hours per day business.

For many years, Loudoun Milk Transportation was the main hauler of milk for Loudoun County, Virginia dairymen and today is one of the largest businesses in Purcellville and in Loudoun County. And to think...it all started with a single truck and the hard-working and ambitious son of a Lovettsville farmer.