[kwhitefoot]

> instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market

Middle class Victorians, in England at least, had things delivered. I imagine that quite a lot of cosplay characters are middle class.

In fact food delivered to homes of all types was a normal feature of life in England when I was a child in the 50s and 60s. Milk, eggs, etc., every weekday morning delivered directly to the door before breakfast, grocery van came to the street once a week, bread van twice, another van came a bit less often selling lemonade and other drinks.

Of course these services were not universally available, we were lucky to live in a moderately affluent town with a prosperous working class.

We didn't have a freezer until 1966 and I'm not sure that we suffered from the lack. But once everyone had both a freezer and a car those services became unprofitable and eventually disappeared.

[brobdingnagians]

> Of course these services were not universally available, we were lucky to live in a moderately affluent town with a prosperous working class.

I think that's key. The wealthy live well enough in pretty much any society. It is the poor who often have the greatest to gain (and lose, when mis-applied) from technological innovations and from having them become widespread.

[bluGill]

My grandma didn't have a drivers license. She had to use those trucks to get food, or wait for grandpa to get home to go to the store. Those trucks were a real life saver for her. Today women drivers are not a rare exception.