The music box tunes, the slow ride, the icy-sweet reward for chasing. Nothing feels more summery than picking up a frozen treat from an ice cream truck. They may not be as ubiquitous as they once were, but mobile ice cream vendors still cause kids to leave playgrounds or dig through couch cushions for change when they hear the familiar jingle.

And yet the history of ice cream trucks is not just about soft ice cream and sprinkles. Alongside the good humored ones, there were also a few bad players.

Early ice

Ice cream itself was invented in either ancient Persia (now Iran) or ancient China, or perhaps both, but it took centuries for transportation methods to catch up. Ice cream was available at street stands in the early 1900s, but it wasn’t until an Italian immigrant patented a device for making cones that it became easy to buy a sweet treat and take it home. Before that, ice cream lovers would buy a small scoop in a glass bowl (called a penny lick), which they would have to eat immediately and return the bowl. Not only did gulping down ice cream quickly lead to brain freeze, it was also unhygienic, and buying ice cream on the street was risky business.

The first ice cream trucks changed all that, establishing an image of clean snacking that would last for decades. But first, someone had to come up with the brilliant idea of ​​putting ice cream on a stick.

That someone was Harry Burt of Youngstown, Ohio, and his invention was called the Good Humor Bar. It wasn’t a unique innovation; Christian Kent Nelson, also of Ohio, had developed a method of coating ice cream with hard chocolate, and Burt essentially copied it. Nelson’s invention was also successful, sold for years as Eskimo Pie and renamed Edy’s Pie in 2020. The key to the success of Burt’s Good Humor bar was the stick, which prevents you from getting sticky, and the idea of ​​selling it out of white trucks with the branding.

These early ice cream trucks were not the kind you see today, but rather pickup trucks with refrigeration units mounted on the bed. To sell the frozen Good Humor bars, the driver had to get out of the cab and walk around to the back of the truck. Some of the first trucks to hit the road in the 1920s were Ford Model Ts, and the Good Humor truck kept its basic design until the 1950s. Originally, Burt used the bells from his son’s bob for the prototype trucks, meaning that ringing has always been part of the ice cream truck story.

Part of Good Humor’s popularity and longevity was the well-kept image of its fleet. The idea was to make the ice cream vendors the same trustworthy figure as a fireman or policeman. In addition to the all-white uniform with cap and coin-operated machine attached to the belt, three days of training were required before a driver was given the keys to the freezer. Burt died in 1926, but he had grown his company to the point that a businessman named Thomas J. Brimer had no trouble moving the Good Humor brand to the eastern United States, including opening a branch in Chicago in the 1920s.

Screamers

Things should have been going great for Brimer. It was the middle of Prohibition and ice cream was one of the few affordable and legal treats, but just months after the infamous Valentine’s Day Massacre, the gangsters came to cash in on the good cheer.

After attempting to extort $5,000 in protection money from Good Humor, unknown arsonists planted two bombs at the Good Humor factory on Armitage Avenue. The explosion destroyed two trucks and a large ice cream production facility.

Despite the damage, the (alleged) mafia plot ultimately increased Good Humor’s fortunes. The brand’s refusal to bow to pressure from the underworld only strengthened the company’s image as a philanthropist. Good Humor trucks survived the Great Depression and World War II, and by 1950 there were about 2,000 of them on the streets of the United States. Eventually, the oil crisis of the 1970s put an end to the Good Humor truck, and the company focused on selling to grocery stores. Today, original examples of the trucks remain niche collectors’ items, with values ​​reaching six figures at auction.

Speak softly, hit hard

On St. Patrick’s Day 1956, Irish-American brothers James and William Conway drove their converted Chevy van through Philadelphia handing out green-colored soft serve ice cream. Both men were war veterans – William from World War II, James from the Korean War – and both already had families. Their ice cream truck was a risky venture, but it paid off. Today, the Conway family still runs the company the two men founded: Mister Softee, America’s largest soft serve ice cream franchise.

The founders of Mister Softee are responsible for what we now consider the modern ice cream truck. In the 1950s, the Conway brothers worked for the Sweden Freezer Manufacturing Company, which manufactured milkshake machines and equipment for dispensing soft ice cream. Harvey Swenson, the company’s founder, was an inveterate tinkerer and is credited with inventing both the modern milkshake machine and kidney dialysis equipment.

The Conways noticed that people were already mounting soft serve machines in trucks and driving them around, but the machines were getting damaged by rough handling and amateurish installation (soft serve machines are more sensitive to bumps and knocks than frozen popsicles). They went to their bosses at Sweden Freezer with the idea of ​​perfecting an ice cream truck, but apparently the higher-ups weren’t interested, so the brothers did it themselves.

Today, Mister Softee is such a cultural icon that his jingle is instantly recognizable to all but the youngest ice cream fans. It is even a central point in an episode of Curb your enthusiasm. In real life, the jingle – written by legendary advertising executive and funnyman Les Waas – was almost banned by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg in 2004 when he cracked down on noise in the city. The city relented when New Yorkers protested, and the compromise was that trucks could only play the song while driving and had to turn it off when parked.

Hear my shop on wheels ringing down the street
The creamiest and most dreamy soft ice cream
You will receive from Mister Softee
For a refreshing treat of the highest class
Search for Mister Softee
SOFT Double-E
Mr. Softee!

The Ice Cream War

Mister Softee’s expansion in New York hasn’t been without its challenges. Much of Midtown is now occupied by the New York Ice Cream Co., a rival company founded by renegade former Mister Softee employees. But turf wars are nothing new for ice cream trucks.

In Scotland, for example, the ice cream van has a dubious past because it played a central role in the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars. Glasgow was a rough place in the early 1980s, and a poorly planned building boom in the East End created a serious problem. Newly built neighbourhoods were inconveniently far from supermarkets, so enterprising types started selling all sorts of household goods from the back of the ice cream van. The criminal element soon realised that the vans were a perfect cover for the distribution of drugs and stolen goods.

Violence followed. Ice cream vans were vandalised or shot at overnight. Criminals fought over turf and beat up rival and unruly ice cream van owners. The situation culminated in a fatal arson attack on the home of a young ice cream van driver who refused to sell drugs for the gangsters. Andrew Doyle survived the attack, but six of his family members perished in the flames. Two men went to prison for the crime, but the trials were lengthy and controversial, and many in Glasgow believed the real killers were never found.

Forecast: Drizzle

Today, most ice cream trucks are converted vans developed by Mister Softee that sell ice cream out of a side window. They are still the most popular ice cream trucks, and there are currently more than 600 Mister Softee trucks in operation across the United States, all with the basic selection of vanilla or chocolate ice cream, as well as regional variations and customizations by the franchisees.

There is a small selection of niche ice cream trucks built from vintage cars, but these are mostly towed to their location in a trailer like pop-up shops. In most cases, small business owners looking to set up an ice cream truck choose a reliable workhorse and then decorate it with bright colors to attract customers.

The modern addition to the ice cream truck legacy is the popularity of food trucks and food truck gatherings. These days, you’re more likely to buy a $12 scoop of handmade ice cream from a Chevy P30 at a local food truck festival than a $1 strawberry pie from an old Ford, but you can still hum the song “Good Humor” while you do it.

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