Good Humor 1965 Ford F-250 Ice Cream Truck
The Ford F-series pickup truck has been consistently the best-selling vehicle in the United States since 1981. Ford makes a new F-series every 53 seconds, and they are everywhere. Ubiquitous in the working industry, trucks will often be fitted with some custom bed providing added utility and mounting points for ladders and equipment. What is unusual is an F-series being outfitted to bring ice cream to the people. You can find this one here on eBay.
The seller provides precious little information, but it’s an F-250, plain and simple. All of the modifications are, presumably, external. Underneath, you can find any number of V-8 or inline-6 engines and any number of manual or automatic transmissions. 1965 was the introduction of Ford’s Twin I-Beam suspension system on two-wheel-drive models, though the four-wheel-drive models kept the solid front axle setup. I would expect the seller would be open to answering any questions potential buyers may have about the truck, so be sure to make sure you know what you’re buying.
If you were to buy this truck, it would need restoration. Presumably a full restoration, so you’d be free to take some liberties with the powertrain setup, although if it was me doing it, I’d keep the ice cream truck motif. Whether or not you can legally use the Good Humor name, everyone likes the ice cream man, and that won’t ever change. I had never heard of Good Humor before writing this article, but it’s apparently an institution. My sincere apologies to whoever has good memories of their local Good Humor delivery driver.
There are only two pictures included in the eBay listing, so I went out and found a stock photo of Ford’s Twin I-Beam suspension setup, and a photograph of another Good Humor ice cream truck. In the interest of giving credit where it’s due, you can find those images and more information about the suspension setup and more images of a similar truck here and here, respectively. As far as potential business ventures go, delivering ice cream out of a vintage Ford is poised to be lucrative, especially if you do something really interesting with it. Like convert it to electric power, or paint it some wild color like Citrus Yellow. Something unexpected to draw the eye, and the old truck itself would serve as a conversation starter. To paraphrase the old Honda tagline, you meet the nicest people in a vintage vehicle.
Auctions Ending Soon
2006 Ford Mustang Saleen S281 SCBid Now9 hours$15,000
2002 Subaru Impreza WRXBid Now3 days$333
1975 Chevrolet Corvette ConvertibleBid Now3 days$3,000
1964 Ford F-100 Camper CustomBid Now3 days$2,000
2006 Jeep Wrangler SportBid Now5 days$10,500
Comments
Wow, Mr. EBay Flipper, thanks for all of those great high quality pictures and detailed description to let the buyer know what they are spending their hard earned cash on!
Less than 2 days left and no bids. That should tell the seller something.
Twin I Beam setup is the worst driving front suspension ever built. Even the single I beam on the older Ford cars and trucks drove better. “Ask the man who owns one” on the front of his Ford motor home chassis. Only the fact that we’re always towing a trailer keeps the thing in a straight line when you want it to. Just don’t go heavy duty on the brakes at an intersection with ruts or on a highway with 18 wheel grooves in it. Really miss our two prior GM based rigs. Also miss the ice cream trucks too.
Twin I beam, for some reason, was a selling point for Ford. They must of thought it was ‘tough’. What it did was eat tires alive. You had constant camber change, and massive edge wear on those front tires.
Coincidentally, yesterday I happened to see another vintage (but restored & operational) Good Humor truck parked outside the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, PA, selling ice cream. The owner/operator was even outfitted in a white Good Humor uniform.
There is a man in Strasburg that restores Ford Good Humor ice cream trucks!
Does a ‘Sidewalk Sundae’ come with it?
Memories. I grew up in NY and our Good Humor driver was a cantankerous old guy named Ben. It was funny, all the kids more or less snapped to attention when placing their orders.
“No scoop for you!”
How has this writer never heard of God Humor before this? Is he not in the USA or has he been locked in his parents basement his whole life?
I was wondering the same thing. If he’s located here in the US, I might think he was a wierdo.
God’ll get you for that! LOL
Perhaps the one word explains it, “youth”, once again wasted on the young.
Or, could it just be the fading memories of old age?
God Humor
God said “Adam, I want you to do something for Me”. Adam said “Gladly, Lord, what do You want me to do?”
God said “Go down into that valley”. Adam said “What’s a valley?”
God explained it to him.
Then God said “Cross the river”. Adam said “What’s a river?”
God explained that to him.
And then He said “Go over to the hill…” Adam said “What is a hill?”
So, God explained to Adam what a hill was.
He told Adam “On the other side of the hill you will find a cave”. Adam said “What’s a cave?”
After God explained, He said “In the cave you will find a woman”. Adam said “What’s a woman?’
So God explained that to him, too.
Then, God said “I want you to reproduce”. Adam said “How do I do that?”
God first said (under His breath) “Geez…”
And then, just like everything else, God explained that to Adam, as well.
So, Adam goes down into the valley, across the river, and over the hill, into the cave, and finds the woman. Then, in about five minutes, he was back…
God, His patience wearing thin, said angrily “What is it now?” And Adam said “What’s a headache?”
Ice cream trucks driving around today are beat to s*** 30 year old minivans covered in peeling, sunburnt stickers with a driver sticking his hands into a tattered cooler to pull out a generic popsicle obtained from God knows where.
True, and the one in our neighborhood plays a Christmas carol jingle, 12 months a year.
I’ve seen a couple of these lately. 1 here in NY. Don’t know what happened to that one. And another along Rt 15 in PA
Wow. You never heard of Good Humor?
OK, Boom… MILLENNIAL!
😃
Nothing wrong w/twin I beam frt ends! I have a 65 F250 custom cab since 1981.that was red, a Oregon logging pickup. Towed a 26′ Airsteam/w a Harley & welding tanks/gear in back & a Home made breakdown lumber rak 2 Texas, then2 Ohio, then traded in 4 a 40′ 5th wheel & went 2 West Virginia, back 2 home in the California Sierra mountains w/Harley in hallway & lumber rack / wall jacks on roof loaded down w/tools w/a tired 352 V8 & 4spd. Now it’s Black, 71 Tbird 429 V8 w/C6 tranny, 4.11 Posi & Chumps now-a-days still.can’t out haul me
The last time I saw a functioning ice cream truck, was 1971 in Vietnam, at Camp Frenzell Jones in Long Binh. The thing constantly played the theme from Popeye the sailor.
I agree that the writer must be young, as Good Humor trucks were ubiquitous.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!
(Hey, somebody had to say it, right?)
Twin I beam was a good idea in theory. As the axel was being pushed up on curves the opposite side was being pulled down keeping the vehicle relatively level. Ford never adjusted the eye beams for alignment except tow. So you ended up with tire wear and handling problems. It took special equipment to bend the beams into alignment specifications. I did a lot of them back in the day and it would solve the problems. Another issue was kingpins freezing up due to rust or just wear. Replacing those was a regular money maker for my shop.
God bless America
Vehicle title: Salvage.
Good Humor may have been an east coast thing, or even a northeast thing. I got a summer job, after graduation from college but before grad school with Good Humor at the New Jersey shore. Men (no women in those days) who were from out of town (like me) stayed in a boarding house where we got breakfast. They showed up at the warehouse in the morning and got their stuff, and then went out. Theyhad assigned territories, the return guys got the best ones, but none of them were bad. The best sales were between 7 and 10 pm, but 2 to 4 pm were not bad. If you were lucky you got a truck like this. If not, you got a little trailer that was towed by the truck to its “spot” and that stayed in the same place all day in a high traffic area where there was some dirt to pull off onto, like a rotary (roundabout to you Brits and their colonies). Big news at the time was a guy in CT who had the little trailer and when the truck guy came to get him at the end of the day, he was gone, whether he ran away or was kidnapped was a cause for speculation for a long time. Being nice helped a lot, if a little kid dropped his treat, giving him a free replacement endeared you to the parent and resulted in more sales. Being consistent in the route and the time was also helpful to sales.
I grew up in the suburbs just north of Chicago in the 50’s and 60’s, we had Good Humor trucks there for sure. But as a kid, I rarely had enough money and it never seemed he had a regular schedule, I spent what I had at the Dairy Queen in town, which incidentally is still operating as an ice cream store, although not under the Dairy Queen name. Fantastic memories growing up in a more peaceful time.
Never seen/heard of them in California, ‘Ice cream man’ seemed 2 b in jeep/small bread truck type setup?
These were made famous in the Beach Boy song “No Go Showboat” when they sing “it’s even shut down by the ice cream truck.. cause it’s a no go show boat”.
Safe bet that it never was driven in snow!
These were everywhere as I was growing up, northern Virginia (DC metro area). I think ours was a Ford cab/doghouse for most of my impressionable years, just like the bus I took to school. Our G H vendor would ring a bell on a string and we could hear it all around the neighborhood. He would wait for kids to gather and sell out of the box, making change with the cool coin changer on his belt. I feel all the fun has been lost with what passes as the “ice cream man” now. Those creepy old vans with a recorded song playing ad infinitum and sounding like a warped cassette…..what’s the fun in racing to get store bought treats from these vendors? Yuck.
Little_Cars, Good Humor was “good” but the Frozen Dairy Bar in Falls Church was the ultimate!
The words (misspelled) say it all – barn “fine”. Lol As bugs bunny would say..”what a maroon..”
<> Hmm x 2. I worked with a guy from “Noo Yok Sidie” who said that, for years, he had believed that these were called “Gudge Yuma” trucks.
Truck is described as ’65 F250 yet the description of suspension system states it appeared on the 250 only in 1980. By looks of truck, ( extendable stop sign, for example, as well as other features) it is not from the ’60s. Maybe 1980s?
Growing up a plain ole country boy we didn’t have ice cream trucks in our neck of the woods. But we could buy huge soft freeze ice cream cones for .25c at a Fosters Freeze stand about three miles away where our country road intersected with a main county highway. In the summers with temps over 100 degrees I loved licking that cold ice cream as it melted and dripped down my hand and arm while walking back to the farm with my brothers and sisters and other friends that were scattered along the way. Good memories.
God bless America
Is it “Good Humour” in Canada?
Ended: Jun 08, 2021 , 12:18PM
Starting bid:US $8,500.00
[ 0 bids ]
Item location:Riverton, Utah
This listing was ended by the seller because the item is no longer available.
Wow, My grand daughter who is only 7 knows about the Good Humor ice cream trucks. Does Barn Finds need a very young writer??
The Good Humor “BOX” is what is important in that item…. the truck is of secondary nature. Those boxes are VERY scarce now days. I grew up just out side of Balto. City in Balto. County (difference was our “row houses” were set farther from the street and had small front yards that the Dads had to mow). The Good Humor man would show up between 6 and 9 every night, and sell like mad to all the kids, move about half a block and stop and sell again. All those guys wore a white uniform with an eight cornered policeman style white hat. I’m thinking some even had a metal emblem on the front of the hat that said Good Humor on it… but that part is vague now.
Those boxes were fixed to various types of pick up truck frames… some had no roof to the drivers compartment. Yes, a “Convertible” so to speak, the local kids loved that truck, we all dreamed about having one of our own someday. Selling Ice-cream seemed to be the Ideal job. And we were all fascinated by the change holder each driver had… I ended up purchasing one for use on my paper route latter on.
Those “convertible” trucks had a small canvas cover that was rolled up but mounted to the box and could be snapped on to the windshield when it rained or to give the driver a little shade. Also there was an “isinglass” window in a canvas side curtain that could be snapped on the drivers side.
The Good Humor co. would remove the box and re-install it to a new truck when needed. None ever had a passenger seat, but a box with jack and other tools in it that held that side curtain was in it’s place. There was about 4 or 5 bells attached to the front windshield in the middle with a string or wire going through a small hole for the driver to pull and ring the bells.
The box was lit all the way around with small bulbs under a metal cover, the box had at least three small doors, very thick that the operator opened to get out the ice-cream that was produced in their own plant in Balto. Dry ice cooled the box very well, and occasionally we could get the driver to break off a piece of the dry ice and give it to us in a cup … adding water gave off a steam like gas until the Ice disappeared… GREAT fun for little kids.
YES…. that box is what should be the money maker in the fellows ad.
Great writeup. I remember them exactly as you did, and I was never able to get a coin changer when i got my paper route. I can hear the bells in my head now. Like the man who drove a green panel truck ringing a bell to tell people the “Knife Sharpener” was around, I think they both disappeared around the late ’70s. But I’m a former Queens, NY guy, so this may make no sense to anyone but someone who lived in my neighborhood.
Yes, we had a knife sharpener in the Balto. area also, showed up every month or so… I was very young back then, it was the early 50’s. The ICE man was another guy that got replaced by tech. we had a two door “ice box” and this fellow would come by every other day or so, yell ICE MAN and and bring us a big block of ice and put it in the top door. Then about 1950 Dad bought the first refrigerator, no more “ice man”. We never got any Dry ice like the Good Humor trucks had… probably too cold… ha ha.