Jeff Porter (51) has been delivering ice-cream to shops throughout Otago for the past 33 years and said while he would miss the job, he was glad his 20-year-old son was taking over from him.
Jeff filled up his latest logbook on Monday, but he bought a new one as he would still be going out for the occasional run with his son.
Ryan has a good idea of what life on the road will be like, having first joined his father in the cab when he was 3.
Some of their customers would still remember him as a young boy helping during the school holidays, Jeff said.
Fonterra Brands national operations manager Glenn Duncan said Ryan was probably one of the company's youngest drivers and probably the only second-generation ice-cream contractor Tip Top had appointed in the past 72 years.
Jeff was 18 when he rode from the family farm in torrential rain to be the last of 40 applicants to be interviewed at Tip Top's Dunedin ice-cream factory in 1975.
"They figured that a country boy who had driven 40 miles on a motorbike in the pouring rain and managed to stay dry must be keen and organised enough to do the job," Jeff recalled.
In those days, he delivered everything from frozen chicken to peas, as well as ice-cream.
"When we just went down to ice-cream you would hardly think there was a living to be made just selling ice-cream."
However, southern people were good "ice-cream eaters", no matter the weather, Jeff said.
"When there is snow on the ground we're still selling ice-cream."
Taste-testing, naturally, was an important part of the job, and when he was loading the truck at 6am he was usually trying to open a box of ice-creams, he said.
"You can't sell it without trying it."
Jeff will join his wife running the family's Dunedin motel business.
