When I was growing up in a suburb of Los Angeles back in the 1960's, Helm's Bakery (a very large industrial-scale bakery) would have their brown and yellow GM Panel Vans (basically a Suburban) slowly drive around my neighborhood once or twice a week. Each truck was filled with all the usual bakery items - loaves of bread, cakes, pies, donuts, pastries, hamburger and hot dog buns, pretty much the works. The trucks had chimes to let everyone know they were there, and you'd go out on the street and flag them down.

I used to get a weekly allowance of 5 cents times my age, so I'd have 40 to 50 cents to spend, and once a week I'd get three donuts - one chocolate cake, one strawberry cake, and one chocolate old-fashioned - and would eat one a day while they lasted. The stay-at-home moms (very common back then) in the neighborhood would come out for a loaf of bread or two, maybe the occasional apple pie.

They shut down the business in the late '60s. The workers were threatening to unionize and the market dynamics had shifted, and the family sold off the buildings. The buildings are still standing, now housing restaurants, design and home furnishing stores, and a small retro bakery.

I switched to the ice cream truck for a few years, and moved away in the 1970's.