Ice cream van
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An ice cream van (Commonwealth English) or ice cream truck (North American English) is a commercial vehicle that ice cream products are sold from, usually during the spring and summer. Ice cream vans are often used for street vending and drive through residential areas and park at parks, beaches, or other areas where people congregate. Ice cream vans often have decorations, a serving window on the kerbside, and a display of available products and their prices. Most ice cream vans are independently owned and operated. However, there are ice cream van franchises such as Mister Softee.
A distinctive feature of ice cream vans is their sound devices, used to attract attention. Some use a bell or a set of bells that is rung[1] while many use a horn loudspeaker which amplified music is played from. Some ice cream vans use both of these sound devices.[2] The amplified music played by ice cream vans is typically an instrumental children's, classical, folk, or traditional pop song that is played repeatedly and sounds like a music box or electronic music. Early ice cream vans utilize electro-mechanical music boxes, with digital music boxes becoming more common in the late 20th century.[3]
History
[edit]
Early ice cream vans carried simple ice cream, during a time when most families did not own a freezer. As freezers became more commonplace, ice cream vans moved towards selling novelty ice cream items, such as bars and ice pops.[4]
In the United Kingdom
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There are mainly two types of ice cream vans in the United Kingdom:
- a hard van, which sells scoop ice cream and is only equipped with a freezer.
- a soft van, which has a freezer and also a soft serve "whippy" machine for serving ice cream cones and screwballs.
They are usually converted from factory standard vans with the rear cut away and replaced with a fibre glass body (to reduce the weight).
The traditional song played by ice cream vans in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand is "Greensleeves".[5][6]
Because of the British climate, not only is running an ice cream van profitably very difficult outside summer, but it is also an unpredictable business. A summer heatwave can provoke a massive upturn in fortunes for a few days, but after the weather has cooled sales drop off dramatically. The need to take advantage of rare and short-lived opportunities can result in the fierce rivalry between ice cream vans in coterminous areas[clarification needed][What is coterminous with what?], with the main disputes being over who is entitled to sell ice cream in a particular 'patch'. This has also led to some ice cream van vendors diversifying and selling other products such as crisps, chips, burgers, or hot dogs from their vehicles at other times of the year.
In several local authority areas, particularly in London Boroughs with existing street markets, street trading regulations prohibit ice cream vans from remaining in one static location. The legislation also contains powers to ban ice cream vans from specific streets. Proposals in the current[when?] London Local Authorities Bill would allow only 15 minutes of trading per vehicle per street each day.[7] There is also a nationwide code of practice[8] for the use of chimes, which limits the volume to 80 dB and the duration to twelve seconds, but these rules are rarely observed and rarely enforced. Chimes must not be played more often than every three minutes near hospitals, schools, and churches when they are in use.
In Scotland, ice cream vans have been used to sell smuggled cigarettes[9] and, in the 1980s Glasgow ice cream wars, as front organizations to sell illicit drugs.[10]
Ice cream van manufacturer
[edit]Whitby Morrison, based in Crewe, Cheshire, was founded by Bryan Whitby, who filed a UK patent in 1965 for mobile ice cream-producing equipment through which soft serve units were powered off the van's drive mechanism. Today, the company is the UK's biggest ice cream van manufacturer, producing around 100 vans a year; its products have been exported to over 60 countries.[11] The company has also been developing a fully electric on-board battery system to power the soft-scoop machines it fits; the first all-electric van was expected to be delivered in the summer of 2019.[needs update][12]
In the United States and Canada
[edit]
In the United States and Canada, ice cream trucks are converted from cargo vans, conversion vans, passenger vans, step vans, and even Type A school buses. Those that only sell pre-packaged novelty products such as ice cream bars, ice cream sandwiches, and popsicles are more common than those that sell soft serve ice cream.
Apart from ice cream, ice cream trucks may also sell snow cones, Italian ice or water ice, snacks, toys, and candy. Many trucks have a yellow or red triangular sign with lights, similar to a school bus stop sign that is extended to warn other drivers to slow down because children could be crossing the street to buy ice cream.
Traditional songs played by ice cream trucks in the US and Canada are "The Band Played On", "Camptown Races", "Cradle Song", "The Entertainer", "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man", "It's a Small World", "La Cucaracha", "Little Brown Jug", the Mister Softee Jingle ("Jingles and Chimes"), "Music Box Dancer", "Picnic" (a Japanese children's song usually played with a voice saying, "hello" at the beginning of the song), "Pop Goes the Weasel", "Red Wing", "Sailing, Sailing", "Turkey in the Straw", and "Yankee Doodle".[13][14]
In Scandinavia
[edit]Norway
[edit]Norway has two leading ice-cream van companies; Isbilen (lit. ice-car) by Fråst, and Diplom-isbilen by Diplom-Is. Diplom-Isbilen sells ice cream made by Diplom-Is, and isbilen sells ice cream made by Isbjørn-Is; they also sell fish. The ice cream vans can be heard from afar and attract customers to the street by playing the iconic tune "Norge rundt", symbolizing their presence all over the country.
Sweden
[edit]Hemglass is the Swedish brand of the ice cream manufacturer Hjem-IS Europa A/S and was launched in Sweden in 1968. The company distributes its products in ice cream trucks in Sweden Hemglass and Denmark (Hjem-IS).
See also
[edit]
References
[edit]- ^ Hollar, Katie (9 August 2000). "Ice-cream man!". The Kansas City Star. pp. 92–93.
- ^ Hollis, Henri. "What's it like driving an ice cream truck in Atlanta?". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ISSN 1539-7459. Retrieved 23 April 2025.
- ^ Neely, Daniel Tannehill (2005). Soft Serve: Charting the Aural Promise of Ice Cream Truck Music (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 February 2009.[page needed]
- ^ "Ice Cream Trucks". Serving Ice Cream. Archived from the original on 26 July 2014. Retrieved 17 October 2011.
- ^ Barton, Laura (12 July 2013). "Ice-cream van chimes: the sound of the British summer". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 7 May 2025.
- ^ "In lockdown, ice cream trucks roam the suburbs ... just don't play it too loud". The Age. 26 September 2021. Archived from the original on 5 February 2023. Retrieved 5 February 2023.
- ^ "London Local Authorities Act 1994 (c. xii)". Ministry of Justice. Archived from the original on 11 June 2008. Retrieved 11 May 2008.
- ^ "Code of Practice on Noise from Ice Cream Van Chimes". Defra.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 30 October 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
- ^ "Ice cream ploy by tobacco sellers". BBC News. 3 May 2001. Archived from the original on 28 July 2020. Retrieved 11 June 2008.
- ^ ""Ice-cream wars" verdicts quashed as justice system faulted". The Scotsman. Archived from the original on 21 December 2004. Retrieved 16 January 2015.
The events [began] as rival gangs fought for the control of lucrative ice-cream van runs used as a front for distributing stolen goods and heroin ...
- ^ Evans, John (23 March 2020). "Behind the scenes at Britain's ice-cream van HQ". Autocar. Archived from the original on 2 February 2021. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
- ^ Tapper, James (2 June 2019). "A 99, sprinkles and no diesel: here come the electric ice-cream vans…". Guardian. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 9 August 2020.
- ^ "Nichols Electroncis > Omni 2 Music Box (32 songs) | Nichols Electronics | Ice Cream Truck Music Box". Archived from the original on 6 January 2023. Retrieved 6 January 2023.
- ^ Perez Tobias, Suzanne (25 July 2010). "Ice cream trucks not music to all ears". The Wichita Eagle. p. 11.
External links
[edit]
- Neely, Daniel Tannehill (Spring 2005). "Soft Serve: Charting the aural promise of ice cream truck music" (PDF). Esopus. 4. New York, NY: 23–28. Archived from the original on 5 February 2009.
