1969 Ford 250 Good Humor Ice Cream Truck - More Than Just An Ice Cream Truck

The rhythmic tinkling of the bells of Good Humor Ice Cream Trucks were as much a part of my growing up on Long Island as the quacking of ducks in the park next to my house were. Growing up in Nassau County, just a stones throw from Kennedy Airport, when those trucks turned onto Overlook Place it was as Norman Rockwellian as my life got. The ice cream was pretty good too.

 

In my minds eye, the Good Humor Trucks that would pull onto my block looked exactly like this one. Everything from the dashboard forward and underneath being a 1969 Ford F250, it was, of course, that massive freezer out back, with it's mini vault like doors that opened and closed with wonderful solidity, that made a Good Humor Truck a Good Humor Truck.

 

Good Humor, also known as "ice cream on a stick", was created by candy-maker Harry Burt in Youngstown, Ohio in 1920. Mr. Burt's first invention was the "Jolly Boy Sucker" which was a lollipop on a stick. While working in his ice cream parlor he created his own recipe for a smooth chocolate coating that would stick to ice cream. His daughter, Ruth, thought it tasted it good but was messy to eat. It was his son, Harry, who suggested that he insert the wooden sticks from the Jolly Boy Sucker into the ice cream as handles. Burt named his new creation "The Good Humor Bar" after the belief that a person's outlook on life was related to the "humor of the palate".

In the beginning, Good Humor bars were peddled in white wagons by door to door salesmen in white uniforms. The white uniforms meant to denote an impression of cleanliness and safety in the community. 

With the advent of refrigerated trucks, Burt switched to the porcelain white trucks most associated with Good Humor Ice Cream. In 1930, Burt sold the majority of shares in the company to M.J. Meehan who quickly expanded the company. By the mid 1930's, Good Humor bars were sold throughout most of the country. 

Most of the Good Humor trucks I remember were heavy duty Ford or Chevrolet pickup trucks modified by Hackney Body of Washington, North Carolina.

Refrigeration units were "220 plug in", Hackney cold plate freezers that over night could chill ice cream down to approximately twenty degrees below zero. There was a compressor mounted where the passenger seat would normally be; nothing under the hood of the truck had anything to do with the freezer. The deep freeze would last for about 3-4 days or until the temperature inside the freezer got to around five below. As a safety precaution, there was no door on the driver's side. By the way, I do not recall Good Humor drivers dressed in uniform like this; Good Humor drivers when I was a kid were young men with long hair, t-shirts and cut offs. While a far cry from the picture of the middle America of the 1940's and 1950's I wanted it to be, it sufficed.  

In 1961, the Meehan family sold the  company to Unilver's U.S. subsidiary, the Thomas J. Lipton Company. In 1976, Lipton discontinued what was referred to as "direct selling" and began selling  Good Humor Ice Cream in grocery stores instead. Local fleets of Good Humor trucks were sold off to other ice cream distributors who changed the signage on the sides of the trucks.

 

That explains why in the late '70's I'd still see trucks that looked like Good Humor trucks perusing neighborhoods selling what could best be described as generic ice cream. And while buying Good Humor Ice Cream at the super market was infinitely more convenient than waiting for the truck to come down the block, I know I speak for many that in 1976, Lipton phased out a lot more than just ice cream trucks.