Why Milk Crates Are Almost Too Perfect For Storing Stuff

How the milk crate, a commonly stolen type of container, became the target of tough legal regulations — and how those regulations have started to backfire.

Sometimes, it’s possible to create something that’s too useful, that is designed for a niche purpose but is so well-attuned to that purpose that it attracts other people, who find a similar value but different use case than was intended.

And because of the sheer prevalence of said useful tool, it suddenly is everywhere — finding purpose as a cheap alternative to a trip to the local department store. If you’re the maker of that too-useful something, whaddya do?

Well, in the case of the dairy industry, you use your political influence to try to ban all those college students from using milk crates.

Let’s discuss the bizarre legal status of the plastic milk crate.

“I don’t see the artistic merit even now. It was purely utilitarian.”

— Geoff Milton, an Australian designer and engineer who has been credited with inventing the modern plastic milk crate in the 1950s and 1960s, speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald back in 2014…