Cold Storage: 1963 Ford Good Humor Truck
This is what I would call an ice-cream-bar-find.. Ok, I admit, that was not humorous in the least, but this truck is full of good humor, literally. This 1963 Ford Good Humor Truck is found on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $8,900. It has been in cold storage (oh boy) since 1983 and it’s pretty sweet.. (you can see where this one is going)
Ahh.. the good ol’ days, when your kids would be running around outside all day, getting actual exercise, with nary an electronic device in sight. Now, there’s probably some sort of ice cream cone video game app that kids play on their $100 a month smart phones instead of running out to the curb with a few coins to grab a real frozen treat when they hear the familiar Good Humor bell. Today, parents the world over probably shudder at the thought of their kids running up to some stranger’s white van on the street when they’ve told them for years to run away from white vans, not towards them!
The Good Humor Company started in 1920 when a gentleman, upon the advice of his son, put a stick into an ice cream treat to make it easier and less-messy to eat. The company was awarded a patent for that product in 1923 and they opened a plant in Chicago in 1929. In that same year, the mob demanded $5,000 ($70,000 in 2016 dollars!) in “protection” money and after refusing to pay, they destroyed a portion of the company’s fleet. Talk about no good humor there, so much for the good ol’ days. At the company’s peak, in the 1950s, they operated over 2,000 trucks and by 1960 there were over 85 Good Humor products. In 1976 the company sold their fleet of trucks to concentrate on selling directly to stores. This truck has a freezer made by Hackney and it’s taller and narrower than the freezers on the newer trucks are.
This particular truck is a 1963 Ford F-250 and the seller says that this is a prototype model and it didn’t work too well for the company. If there are any Good Humor truck scholars out there, would that make this particular truck more valuable than a non-prototype truck? I’m guessing yes, but I could be wrong. This is the only way into the cab, through the right-hand door opening; or where the right-hand door would be if there was one, which there isn’t. Look at that floor shifter! I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen one like that before, I have no clue why it can’t be shorter than that.
I’m guessing that this is either a 223 or a 262 inline-six cylinder and the seller says that it doesn’t run. The engine, like every other square inch of this future money-making venture of a vehicle, will need to be restored. It’s been done many, many times in the past so you should be able to find lots of help out there. Is this Good Humor truck worth restoring or is that a laughable idea?
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Comments
Cool!
aaarrrggghhh….how much????????????
I “believe” those were standard issue 4 speed gearshifts.I liked them being as hgh as they were. A friend of mine had a ’66 shortbed, & it was the vehicle I learned to drive stick in around his horse pasture.
One less zero and it would be a deal… that’s utterly bizarre I mean it’s a ..sorry… cool idea, but it’s past being rough. It;s a parts truck.
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I remember these when they were new and fresh. Tight fitting freezer doors, always clean. Long summer days… good times!
Good heavens, not so happy now, are you? What a mess. It never ceases to amaze me what some people think has value, especially THAT kind of value. Pretty much limited appeal, very limited, even for a restored one. I’d be very surprised if anybody bought this.
I think this truck has more appeal to more people than most of the cars on here. Ice cream trucks have been making the rounds in city’s and towns for years. Multiple generations have experienced the joy of buying ice cream from a truck on a hot summer day. The fact that this is an early example of an all to familiar vehicle makes it even more special. To say the appeal is limited is laughable.
I drove a ice cream truck in 1969 for a summer job in my Midwestern town, it wasn’t good humor but still was a experience. Being the new kid I got the bad side of town which you had to be careful not to give the people the ice cream before you got the money. Mine was more like the mail trucks you see today. It would cost a small fortune to restore this truck for more or less sentimental reasons.
$8900.00?????? He’s smoking some good humor and if he keeps it up he’s going to want some of those ice cream bars.
As a kid my dad had a milk/ice cream route and we would deliver it door to door starting at 5 am and we would either leave it in insulated coolers on the steps or for the older customers walk right in the house and put it in their fridge. I remember my first time going into an older lady’s house, it was about 5 am and dark and my pops said just go into the kitchen and put it in the fridge. So I’m walking through this darkened living room and this voice says “good morning”, this old lady was sitting in the dark in her rocker and damned near gave me a heart attack.
Looks like I need to watch Cheech & Chong’s Nice Dreams on Netflix tonight.
“Walk right In’….. That reminds me of my girlfriend in Riverside, Ca. “back in the day” of 1957. They had a Mina Bird who was very vocal, indeed. They also had a milkman who would walk right in the back door and leave the bottles on a counter. He would say, “Milkman” as he entered. Soon the Mina Bird picked up on it and would holler very loudly, ” MILKMAN”! at the lest provocation even when there was no milkman around! I think that sometimes when I was there visiting he thought I WAS THE MILKMAN because he would holler out that now famous phrase “MILKMAN”!
I was telling my son earlier when I saw the freezer door, I remember the sound of that shutting, the frozen air near the opening ….I passed the door picture quickly, then a memory of 50 years ago stopped me…the frozen door!
My thoughts — find a decent running/driving Ford truck donor. Buy this one for about $4,000 for the body, throw them together.
You gotta be sucking on one of those Popsicles laced with drugs to pay that much for this beast. Take the box off the back and add to any number of better F250 chassis on the market and maybe have a nice ride. Other than that, the rest of this vehicle is neither experimental or worth 5 figures.
Scotty, the engine is most likely a 223. That would have been the base engine for f100’s up to f350’s at the time. If this truck was made with any options, I would be surprised.
You see how much these go for restored? This might not be that crazy of a price–to the right person.
There is a guy with a restored one who sells ice cream in downtown Chicago. He also wears the traditional white uniform. Kinda blows all the food truck guys away!!!!
I was thinking the same thing. A restored truck like this would draw crowds at any show. Sell some ice cream at the show and it will help with the restoration costs.
Keep in mind that many of the long-running antique car shows have rules in place that make it difficult if not impossible to sell ice cream [or popcorn, lemonade, etc] from a vehicle on display. If the show has a flea market as part of the event, it’s likely they will want your vehicle to purchase a flea market vendor space to sell out of. Many shows work with the state where the show is located, to require that all vendors are registered with the state dept of taxation to collect sales tax [except Delaware].
A few years ago I attended a show that had one of the Good Humor trucks, restored to very nice condition, and set up to vend ice cream novelties. To get around these requirements, the truck owner asked for “donations” & provided free ice cream. The next year it was not at the show. I found out this show’s organizing group was the local county, and they took offense at someone conducting business on the show field.
Plus, if the show organizers have contracted for food vendors to provide fast food for the public, they might object to you cutting into the gross profits of the show, as the organizers typically get a percentage of the food vendor’s gross income.
[I’ve been vending at antique car events since 1969, when I was 17 years old.]
wondering what hes smoking