CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Ron Panneton knew the numbers weren’t good when he became a milkman in 2002.

Everything indicated he was jumping into a dying industry. Home delivery once accounted for most milk sales. By 1963 it was about a third. By 2001 it represented a paltry 0.4 percent.

Two years later Panneton is indeed struggling – to keep pace with demand.

Interest in his glass bottled milk is so strong his Barnstead-based Catamount Farm is turning away customers – his roster has doubled to 200 from a year ago – until he and his wife add a second truck and hire their first employee later this summer.

It’s a story repeated nationwide as dairy delivery services buck the supercenter trend and grapple with an unexpected demand that industry officials attribute to a combination of nostalgia, convenience and taste.

“I don’t know why, but in the glass bottle, it just tastes so good,” said Robin Hempel, a Gilmanton woman who stopped Panneton on the street recently to arrange home delivery after seeing the sign on his truck.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has tracked the steady – and sometimes speedy – decline of home delivered milk since the 1960s, a fate dairy officials blame on the rise of the supermarket, better home refrigeration and longer-lasting milk.

But John Rourke, a dairy marketing specialist with the department, said he expects to see home delivered milk sales plateau or even increase slightly when new figures become available in the fall.

He said it likely is due to greater interest in local and organic products, not to changes in milk consumption, which fell half a gallon to about 211/2 gallons per person last year, part of a downward trend that started in the 1970s.

Many dairy delivery companies tout milk from local farms, much of it produced organically or without the use of added hormones, part of the growing natural foods market.

Part of the new milkman’s (or woman’s) success may be a willingness to branch out. In addition to cheeses, eggs and ice cream, many offer specialty meats, breads, jams and even frozen pizza and cut flowers.

Warren Shaw owns Shaw Farm in Dracut, Mass. About 20 percent of his milk is sold by home delivery to roughly 300 customers, a service he said he helped keep afloat for years by offering frozen meat pies.

“Over the years I’ve struggled with eliminating the service, but I always come up with the answer that I shouldn’t do that,” the fourth-generation dairy farmer said.

Now, with his home delivery sales up 15 percent in recent years, “it’s good that we didn’t,” he said. “There isn’t a week where we don’t have interest from some new customer.”

Convenience also plays a role. Though the price often is higher (plus delivery fees), more people are willing to trade money for time, said Katie Koppenhoefer, spokeswoman for the International Dairy Foods Association.

And most home milk delivery customers apparently have the money. For example, a half-gallon of whole milk from Catamount Farm is $3.85, which includes $1.50 deposit on the bottle. Delivery costs $2 per trip.

Companies said that while their customers run the economic gamut, most are middle- to upper-class families.

The bottled milk boom is benefiting big companies, too. H.P. Hood, a national dairy company based in Chelsea, Mass., has been delivering milk in New England since 1846. Today it has 12,000 home delivery customers.

“There’s definitely an increase,” said Stephen Vigneau, marketing coordinator for the company’s home delivery division. “There’s a lot of interest, a huge amount of interest, and we don’t even advertise.”

The growth in home delivery has helped dairy farmers like Howard Hatch, owner of Hatchland Farm in Haverhill, N.H. Hatch, who supplies milk to Massachusetts delivery companies, recently had to build a new processing plant.

“We used to go down once or twice a week with a small delivery truck,” the lifelong dairy farmer said. “Now we’re going three days a week with 48-foot trailers.”

Remember the metal boxes that kept milk cool on the porch? They’re back, too, a boon for the handful of companies that make them.

Daffne Temple, sales and marketing manager for McShane Metal Products in Erie, Pa., said dairy companies came to her, urging the company to sell its medical laboratory boxes as milk boxes. Now it sells thousands a year.

But growth hasn’t come without challenges. Panneton said few people are getting into the industry, meaning resources to help those who do are rare.

Customers also are spread out geographically. When milk delivery was more common, a company could focus on just a neighborhood or a few small communities.

Modern delivery companies need big coverage areas to get the same customer base.

“Once I had maybe 400 customers in one city,” said Mike Forbes, who owns a delivery service in Elk Grove, Calif. “Now I’ve got 800 in two counties.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: J.M. Hirsch covers food and diet for The Associated Press.

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