An Ice Cream Truck Driver

Transforming school buses into ice cream trucks, watching kids grow up (one popsicle at a time), and struggling to keep the freezers running with Erin Bailey, an ice cream truck driver in New Jersey. What’s her best selling treat? And does she ever get sick of the ice cream truck song?

Music credit:
"The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin
Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

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Transcript

Dan Heath: Erin Bailey is an ice cream truck driver.

Erin Bailey: When I started this, I was 27 years old. I had no business background. I had no idea what I was doing. It was kinda like a hobby, I guess, to start. And I was kind of miserable at my job, so I was like, all right, you know, if I can just do something to kind of offset my living expenses, and maybe I can do this.

Dan Heath: She found an old school bus, and with some help, she turned it into an ice cream truck.

Erin Bailey: And my kids were very young, so actually, we took one of the bus seats and put them in the truck, and my kids were three and six at the time, and they would come with me.

Dan Heath: Now, just imagine you're a 3-year-old kid surrounded by more ice cream than you could eat in a month. Sounds like heaven, right?

Erin Bailey: They hated it. They hated every minute of it.

Dan Heath: Oh, my.

Erin Bailey: Yeah.

Dan Heath: So they weren't bribable with ice cream and popsicles?

Erin Bailey: No, actually, they didn't really eat that much ice cream. But it's funny because, yeah, kids, they're like, "Oh, can I come drive with you? Can I work with you? Can I come in the ice cream truck?" I get that all the time. And I was like, "Believe me, ask my kids You will hate it 15 minutes in."

Dan Heath: I am Dan Heath, and this is "What It's Like To Be..." In every episode of the show, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession, a couple's therapist, a standup comedian, a turnaround consultant. We wanna know what they do all day at work. Today, we ask Erin Bailey what it's like to be an ice cream truck driver. We'll talk about why it's actually hot inside an ice cream truck, how she can stand listening to the same song over and over again, and the fights that sometimes break out with competitors. Stay with us. Selling cold ice cream on a hot day is a logistical feat that we don't often think much about. An ice cream truck is a store, a store on wheels where everything, including the staff, has to fit in the space of a big closet. When Erin was building her first ice cream truck, she had one guiding principle: keep things tight.

Erin Bailey: And my dad even said, he was like, "Well, you're not leaving, you know, much room in there." I said, "Dad, gaps don't make me money." So I was like, that's bumping up to that, that's gonna bump up to that. We're squishing a lot of stuff in here, as much as we can.

Dan Heath: So what all is squished in there? Erin took me on a tour.

Erin Bailey: Okay, so if you're walking up the school bus stairs, like a little 8-year-old, right up to the door to the left is our scooped ice cream freezer. Right above it is all of our scoops and cups for small, medium, large. Across the back is our Italian ice. It stretches the whole width of the truck. To the right side of the truck now, we're at our sinks. We have the hot water heater, three-base sink, and a hand washing sink, and then we have our self-serve machine. On the other side of the serving window, we have our novelty freezer that holds all of our prepackaged novelties. So when I tell you it is tight, it is tight.

Dan Heath: And ironically, hot.

Erin Bailey: Yeah, with all those compressors and everything's radiating heat in there, so when it's 90 degrees outside, it is, like, 110 in there. And people do think, they're like, "Oh, it must be like cold in there 'cause you're dealing with freezers." I'm like, the only time it's cold in there is when I'm, like, fanning myself when I open and close the freezer door just to kind of get some air.

Dan Heath: And all of this planning and effort is done in the service of ice cream, a lot of it.

Erin Bailey: 43 different prepackaged novelty options, eight scooped Italian ice options, hand-scooped ice cream, so like cookie dough, mint chocolate chip, rocky road. We also do gelatis, soda floats, root beer floats, orange floats, cream floats with all with the soda and the ice cream.

Dan Heath: What is your top selling item?

Erin Bailey: The Chipwich.

Dan Heath: The Chipwich.

Erin Bailey: The classic Chipwich for sure.

Dan Heath: So that's two chocolate chip cookies with ice cream in the middle.

Erin Bailey: Yep, and it's got a coating of mini chocolate chips on the outside.

Dan Heath: I would not have predicted that. That's fascinating. I would've thought it was, like, a Drumstick, or what do you call the red, white, and blue pops?

Erin Bailey: Yeah, the original Bomb Pop. That's the Bomb Pop. Some people call it the firecracker.

Dan Heath: A lot of what she sells has stayed the same over the years. Occasionally, she'll try to rotate new things in, but it doesn't always work out.

Erin Bailey: We had a full strawberry sandwich with the shortbread on the outside. I loved it. It was one of my favorites. So I was like, "Oh, this has gotta do well," and it didn't. It was a swing and a miss.

Dan Heath: Over the years, Erin has expanded to three trucks. Sometimes they've been hired to go out to an event of some kind, and other times, they're following specific routes, but there's no way to ever pin it down completely like a train schedule.

Erin Bailey: I know people have always said, "Oh, well, you know, is this gonna be your time slot on Wednesday at five o'clock?" I'm like, no, not really. Like, because I don't know if I'm going to be pulled somewhere else, or I don't know if there's gonna be a party booked that day. So I don't want people to think that I'm gonna be there at five o'clock on every Wednesday. I think back in the day before cell phones and all this, you were able to kind of keep more of a time and a route. But I get text messages, "Oh, we hear the bell. Can you come over to, you know, Lake Medford," or, you know, "I hear the bell. Can you come over to West Creek?" I get pulled so many directions, I don't want to disappoint people by thinking I'm gonna be there at Wednesday at five o'clock.

Dan Heath: It never would've occurred to me that you could text the ice cream truck driver.

Erin Bailey: Yeah, yeah, that's today's day. That's how it is.

Dan Heath: What are the peak hours for ice cream sales?

Erin Bailey: Ooh, so, dinner time, but everybody's dinner time is different. I say dinner time, but that's anywhere between 5:00 and, like, 8:00 or 8:30. In the summer, we work a little bit later, and like the kids don't have school, so people are a little bit more lax with eating dinner a little bit later or just kind eating ice cream for an appetizer. You know, during the summer, people are just a little bit more laid back. But during the school year, I totally get it. They don't want me coming at, you know, eight o'clock at night, and their kid is up and, you know, they want ice cream, and now they're not going to bed, and now they're gonna have a sugar rush. And so I mean, I totally get it, and that's why we don't really work after, like, as soon as it starts getting dark, we wrap it up.

Dan Heath: So what is a usual day's work shift?

Erin Bailey: The weekends and summertime is 12:00 to, like, 8:30, 9 o'clock. And now, like, while it's in school season, we go out between 3:00 and 3:30, and then we stop at, like, 8:00.

Dan Heath: How do you think, as a small business owner, basically, how do you think about your success on a day-to-day basis? Like, do you think in terms of total sales for the day or total number of transactions or, you know, some kind of profit metric, or, like, what scoreboard are you looking at?

Erin Bailey: I guess it would be sales because one stop could be $3, and the next stop could be $32. So if I don't have that many stops, but each stop is a nice stop, it adds up quickly. But then if it's slow and you have not a lot of stops and each stop is only 2 and $3, it's exhausting. It takes the wind out of your sails. It changes the mood that you're in. You're kind of like, "Oh, gosh, I think I'm spending more in gas than actually bringing in today." So those are the days that we'll just, like, kind of communicate. If it's me and my husband working or me and a driver or both my drivers, like, I'll touch base, like, "How's it going out there?" And they'll be like, "Oh, it's so slow," I'll be like, all right, then just, you know, just wrap it up and, and bring it in, because now I'm paying them, and I'm paying for gas. Sometimes it's just not worth it. It's just an off day.

Dan Heath: What's a good day in terms of sales? Like, not, like, the best day ever, but just, like, a good solid day.

Erin Bailey: I mean, if I'm averaging, yeah, if I'm averaging $500 a day, I'm, like, okay, that's good. That's what I'm bringing in. That's not what I've put out. But it adds up very quickly. So if if each truck is going out and they're bringing in $500, I know that I've probably banked, you know, at least 60% of that.

Dan Heath: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, where do you get your ice cream for the truck? Like, do you have one person who supplies you or multiple, or?

Erin Bailey: Yeah, we have one of our suppliers, 'cause people do ask, like, you know, why is a Bomb Pop $4 when I can go to Walmart and get a box of them for $4? I'm like, well, one, the size is different when you're getting it from a supplier. They're much larger. And we can't sell things, 'cause people are like, "Oh, well you should just buy it from Walmart and sell it on the truck." I can't do that. I will lose my mercantile license. So we have to get our stuff from a supplier.

Dan Heath: Well, and also, you can tell that snotty customer, like, when was the last time Walmart pulled up next to them in a suburb to serve them a popsicle?

Erin Bailey: Thank you. Yes. Yes, 'cause we get those customers that are like, "$4? I remember when they were 50 cents." I'm like, well, I mean, you probably remember when gas was 50 cents too. You know, everything's gone up. The last thing I wanna do is raise prices. I have to stay at a price point that it could be more than a treat for somebody. You know, it's like it's not gonna happen once a week. I gotta stay at a price point where they can buy a couple times a week, which is much lower than if you go to our local ice cream stand or a Rita's or something like that. And that's just business.

Dan Heath: Hey, folks. Dan here. You're listening to the second of our three-episode series on classic summer jobs. Last time, we had an ocean lifeguard. If you missed that one, you have to go back. How many times do you get to hear from someone who performed CPR on a dolphin? On next week's show, we will talk to a summer camp director. What's it like to create a kind of temporary escape from the normal world, a place where you can find adventure and make new friends and try out new ways of presenting themselves? As a camp director, you create a small town that only exists two months out of the year with healthcare and food service and housing and childcare. Don't miss it. Now, back to the episode.

In the early '70s, an electrical engineer named Bob Nichols saw the movie "The Sting," which featured a soundtrack of old Scott Joplin ragtime songs, including, of course, "The Entertainer." Nichols wasn't just any electrical engineer. His company, Nichols Electronics, supplied the vast majority of music boxes on ice cream trucks around the country. He thought the song would be a good option to add to his music boxes. It turns out he was right.

Erin Bailey: So when I first started, I didn't know what I was doing, so I kind of just played a different tune each day. I was like, "Oh, it's Tuesday, I'm gonna play number seven." And, you know, "It's Wednesday, so I'm gonna jump to number two," whatever. And I mixed it up, and then I just kind of realized, well, this was the classic. "The Entertainer" was the classic. You know, one of them was "Mary Had a Little Lamb." I'm like, I can't do that. So I stuck with "The Entertainer," and I kind of built my clientele on that 'cause they knew it was my truck, because the other truck didn't play the same tune. So then I kind of was like, all right, this is gonna be my thing.

Dan Heath: I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Erin's been driving an ice cream truck for roughly 17 years. If you do the math on that, she may have heard Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" several 100,000 times.

Erin Bailey: All my customers ask me, do I get tired of listening to that? And in the beginning of the season, yeah, it does get a little, like, wow, okay. Here it is. It's a new season. But then, you know, I'm actually numb to it at this point. Like, I don't even hear it. I'll hear it when I'm not working, but while I'm working, it's just in the background. It's an everyday thing.

Dan Heath: Because an ice cream truck is mobile, it kind of lends itself to turf wars. When Erin first started out, an older couple was also running an ice cream truck in town. They apparently took a offense at the new competition.

Erin Bailey: My daughter was working with me. She was probably, I guess, I don't know, between six and eight. And we had gone down the same street, and my daughter was working the window. They went past us, and they shot her the finger.

Dan Heath: What?

Erin Bailey: And I was like, wow. I couldn't believe it. And that was, like, when I first started, and I was like, oh, God, I don't know if I'm ready for that. Like, I didn't want no trouble. Like, I didn't wanna, I was like... Then you get mad. Then you get mad. It's just like, who are you to, like, even act like that? So then it kind of gives you the drive to be like, "Okay, well, you know, I got this," and just keep doing what you're doing, and you just gotta keep doing what you're doing. And you know, they didn't like us. It is dog eat dog.

Dan Heath: And the competition extends even beyond other ice cream trucks to brick-and-mortar stores. Erin told me about a time when the owner of an ice cream shop didn't like that her truck was parked nearby.

Erin Bailey: He came, actually, to my truck when I was at an event that was right next door to him. And he started yelling at me, telling me that I should not be selling that close to him. And he was suing me for tortious interference of a business or something like that, which I've never even heard of anything like that. So of course, I call my brother-in-law who's an attorney. And I was like, what is this? And you know, he's like, that's, like, if you barricaded his entrance. Like, you're serving ice cream next door at an event. It's not even like I was there. I was just at an event that I was asked to be serving kids on a day trip. I'm like, what? So yeah, it's just he was mad I was selling ice cream.

Dan Heath: So do you have regulars on your routes, like faces you see again and again?

Erin Bailey: Absolutely, 100%. I'll have their ice cream ready for them before they even ask for it.

Dan Heath: No kidding. Tell us about a couple of your regulars. Obviously, you can keep last names out of it, but just tell us about a couple of kids and their favorite orders.

Erin Bailey: So yeah, so if I'm pulling down the street and I see them running, I have a couple of kids that they're, it's Luke and Logan. They've actually just changed it up on me. They would get the Italian ices all the time, and then they were, like, they would get a rainbow. It would be a two-scoop rainbow all the time. And then I would start getting, I'm like, you're doing your two-scoop rainbow? And for years, and then, you know, a couple of seasons. And then they're like, "Oh, we're gonna do blue raspberry." I'm like, oh, oh, okay. I like it, I like it. We're gonna change it up. Okay. And then when we'd get an ice cream. I'm like, oh, we are getting older, aren't we? We are maturing. But most of the time, like, I have an autistic child, his name is John. And before he comes out, he gets two of the cookies and cream sandwiches, it's a big Oreo sandwich, every single time. He hasn't changed his order in probably at least three years. And I already have them, like, "Hi, John," and they already have his sandwiches ready for him. His dad comes out with him. And so yeah, even when I'm training, I'm like, if I'm training a driver, and we're at a stop, I was like, all right, he's gonna get a vanilla sandwich. Or I'll be like, test me. He's gonna get a vanilla sandwich and a Star Bar. And if sure enough, sometimes, sometimes it'll be like, "Oh, I changed it up. I'm gonna do a vanilla sandwich and a cookies and cream bar or something." But I'm like, all right, I was 50% there.

Dan Heath: That's so sweet that you work with the same kids long enough to even see how their tastes change over time. Who's the customer you've been serving the longest time?

Erin Bailey: Oh, gosh. Probably people that have asked me for jobs now. I have ones, they were kids when I first started. They were, you know, even if they were eight or nine years old and, you know, 17 years ago, they're asking for jobs. You know, after, like, 14, 15, they start buying less ice cream. And then I'll see them every once in a while, and they'll be like, "Do you remember me?" I'm like, "Of course I remember you." And I just saw one, she came home from college. I was like, "How old are you now?" She's like, "I'm 25." Her name is Danielle. And I was like, "Oh, my gosh. You used to get your cotton candy bar." And she laughs, and she's like, "I'm actually getting that today." And I was like, oh, my gosh, that's just too funny. But you know, that's a wow factor for me, just 'cause some of these kids have kids. And I was like, well, I served them when they were kids. They grew up and have kids, and it's like generations. And they would tell their kid, like, "This was my ice cream lady when I was a kid." You know? So I just love that.

Dan Heath: It just strikes me that, you know, so many people have jobs where I think they sometimes wonder, like, does this work I'm doing every day amount to anything, you know, that they're in the middle of some huge organization. And your job is really the opposite. It's like every transaction is like a little burst of joy. How does it feel to have a job where you're constantly bringing delight to people?

Erin Bailey: That is the absolute best part of the job. Me and my husband say all the time, like, when we go out in the trucks, and we're out there, and the kids are literally dancing to "The Entertainer," as I'm pulling up to them, they have their ice cream dance, they're all smiles. Whether they just fell off their bike or, you know, they're crying and they hear the ice cream truck, all of a sudden, it's like mom kissing the booboo because they're excited. So we absolutely love that. It is the best part of our day. Behind the scenes, we're like, why do we do this? And then when we go out, and we're like, that's why we do this.

Dan Heath: So Erin, we always have a lightning round of questions on our show. Let me fire away here. What is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know, and what does it mean?

Erin Bailey: I'm gonna say prime the machine. So when you prime the machine, it's when the machine is either, like, in stagnant mode, which is the soft-serve machine. And it's coming out like it's just been beaten too many times. It's in the hopper, it's in the cylinder, it's been beaten too many times. So you wanna prime the machine. So you wanna get rid of the mix that's in the cylinder and put it back in the hopper so you're not wasting product, but it pushes the new product down there, and it's making it nice and fluffy, making it airy. And that's what you want. So I'm gonna go with prime the machine.

Dan Heath: What's a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear?

Erin Bailey: A whistle, which is my favorite.

Dan Heath: People whistling you to pull over the truck.

Erin Bailey: Yes, yes, yes. That's my absolute favorite. And then they come and apologize for the whistle. I'm like, don't apologize. I'm like, the worst misconception of an ice cream truck, how to stop an ice cream truck is just waving. Or just, you know, like, the one minute. Like, they have the, like, the finger, the number one finger, like, to wait. But if they're at the front door and I don't see that and they think I saw that, then I'm going, and they don't know that I didn't see that they had their, like, one-minute, wait-a-second finger out there 'cause I'm trying to look left, right, front, back, rear view, both rear view mirrors, like, you know, so quickly to miss that. So my favorite, favorite, hands down, stop-a-ice-cream-truck is the loudest whistle, 'cause birds. Birds sound like little kids saying stop. Like, is that a bird? Yeah, so. And that's, like, almost annoying, 'cause it's like I stop, and I'll look around, I'll wait for people to see if they come out. I'm like, I think that was a bird. And so then I'll start moving, and then if it wasn't a bird, somebody will yell stop again.

Dan Heath: What phrase or sentence strikes fear in the heart of an ice cream truck driver?

Erin Bailey: Power's out.

Dan Heath: Oh.

Erin Bailey: Hands down, power's out. I'm like, oh, my God. Okay, we got about an hour, and we gotta figure out our generators. Like, you know, what's getting plugged in and what's not, you know? Like, power's out, and how long is it gonna last?

Dan Heath: How often do you have to deal with some kind of equipment failure in your work?

Erin Bailey: It's a revolving door. Like, it's always something. Like, last year, my rear end on the truck went. I went to the shop for one thing, and he's like, "Look, your rear end is, like, you know, you can't drive like this." And I'm like, "Well, okay, well, what do I do?" So that cost me $2,000, and in that same week, I lost my compressor to one of my coal plate freezers, which was another $2,000, within five days. So those are the times when I'm, like, I actually, kind of, a little bit lost it, and I'm like, I'm throwing in the towel. Like, my refrigeration guy is there, and I'm like, you know, this is why people throw in the towel. And thank God my husband is as optimistic and positive as he is. And he's like, "We don't throw in the towel." And we got it fixed, and, you know, it's everything. It's like, you know, we buy freezers every single year, we have to buy new freezers because the risk of losing the freezer is high, 'cause, you know, we're a truck. You know, we're not indoors. So we're asking a lot, a lot from this equipment that is supposed to be indoors and temperature-controlled. And so, you know, it is a revolving door of fix this, get that, and be careful with this. And it's always something.

Dan Heath: It sounds like it's a relatively stressful job, yeah?

Erin Bailey: it is, it is. Like, the best part is, like I was saying, is going house to house. That's, like, our downtime. That's our, like, okay, we're just gonna drive around, and we're gonna hand out ice cream. Behind the scenes, I don't de-stress until November. I am on a high level of stress from the time we open to the time we close. And that's just me. I am a person of stress anyway. So somebody did come to me, it was one of a kid that I knew from one of my daughter's friends. And he says, "You must have, like, the most stressless job." And I'm like, wow. Like, no, I don't. I'm like, what you see me right now, yes, this is the best thing ever. He brought his daughter up, and I'm like, "Look, I just made your daughter's day," you know, but when I go home and, like, I have to figure out, you know, where I'm going. You know, I booked so many parties. Like, did I put that on my calendar? Did I forget to mark my calendar for that? Did I send them the invoice? Like, you know, 'cause I gotta do all that. I gotta book all these events. I'm the person that's, you know, writing out the invoices, emailing this, and contacting the health department, 'cause every event is a different health department, so you have to get inspected every single time. So I have to fill out applications for those. Those are all the stressful things and the time things. So it's, like, for me to just jump in a truck and make people smile, that is the best part. But it's all the other stuff that people don't realize that's, like, so stressful.

Dan Heath: Erin Bailey owns and operates three ice cream trucks in her hometown of Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. We'll have a link to her website in the show notes. I feel so lucky to get to talk to an actual ice cream truck driver. I still remember the first time I saw one when I was a kid. I had just moved to a new neighborhood, and my mom heard the music. And she pushed some bills in my hand and told me to run outside and find it. And it was like seeing a wooly mammoth or something, something you knew was real but didn't think you'd ever get to see in the wild. Such a joyful moment. But what was most interesting to me about this conversation was actually the other side of the spectrum, hearing about the complexity and the stress of doing the work. Running a store on wheels is no joke, and this is a store that will pull over and serve you personally for a $4 order. I mean, Starbucks ain't gonna do that. It's difficult work keeping popsicles frozen in 100-degree ambient temperatures, navigating the constant threat of an equipment breakdown or a vehicle failure, or the risk of missing an event that might constitute your only income that day, making economics work when labor and gas are so expensive. You've gotta be a small business person and an engineer and a car mechanic and a project manager, all the while keeping up a smile because you know you're about to make a kid's day. And folks, that's what it's like to be an ice cream truck driver. This episode was produced by Matt Purdy, whose young son knows exactly what he wants to be when he grows up.

Matt Purdy: And I'm gonna ask you a question, okay?

Matt's son: Yeah.

Matt Purdy: What do you wanna be when you grow up?

Matt's son: Ice cream truck driver.

Dan Heath: You can do it, kid. I'm Dan Heath. Take care, everybody.