Scoop: Ice cream trucks' early start sweet

Since the early 1920s, the magic of those ringing bells on the neighborhood ice cream truck has acted like a Pied Piper in suburbia, drawing both children and adults from blocks away for a bite into a frigid treat on a steamy afternoon.

And so it was last weekend, when unseasonably high temperatures bathed Long Island in a preview of summer. Kids and adults chased after Butch Yamali's Carnival Ice Cream trucks through the streets and parks of Nassau County and western Suffolk. Yamali, owner of Plainview-based Carnival Good Humor Co., which owns 40 trucks, said it was the best April weekend in the company's 20-year history.

Yamali said nine of his trucks -- about the size of FedEx vehicles -- were operating over the weekend in Nassau, where Carnival is the exclusive Good Humor distributor, and in parts of western Suffolk. The trucks sold just over 11,000 pieces -- chocolate bars, vanilla cups, cones and coconut bars -- and Carnival took in about $25,000 for the two days, he said.

The lure of the bells

"It was a record weekend," said Yamali, who also owns catering halls in Nassau -- The Sands and the Maliblue on Lido Beach-- and the Coral House restaurant in Baldwin.

He only rarely puts his ice cream trucks on the road so early, but with brilliant sunshine and temperatures in the 70s, what choice was there?

"You get greedy," he explained with a laugh.

There are many places to get ice cream -- supermarkets, stores, stands. Why is the ice cream truck still such a draw?

"It's a novelty," Yamali said. "It's the bells." And the white trucks. Yamali got into the business in the early 1990s, when Good Humor -- owned by the international conglomerate Unilever -- was looking for some "energetic" salespeople, he said.

Yamali contracts with Nassau County to serve the county's parks. Rich McKenney, regional business manager of Unilever Ice Cream in the metropolitan area, said Unilever has an exclusive agreement with Yamali to distribute Good Humor in Nassau and parts of Suffolk.

"The agreement has been long-standing," said McKenney. "He's been with our brand" for about 20 years. Carnival has about 50 employees during the summer season.

Weather drives business

There are competitors, of course. Like Mister Softee, an ice cream truck franchiser popular in the Northeast that was founded in 1956, in Philadelphia.

"My guys on the trucks do very well," said Selvon Edoo, the Mister Softee manager in Queens. "They will be out this coming weekend," he said. "They'll be out until the end of October."

The mobile ice cream business is very weather-driven.

"Last weekend was a very busy ice cream weekend," said McKenney. "It was one of the busiest [April] weekends we've ever had. We didn't have guys selling ice cream in March, but we could have. People have been ready for spring since February."

Good Humor the brand started out as a company founded in Youngstown, Ohio, in the early 1920s by Harry Burt, owner of an ice cream parlor. He got a dozen trucks and outfitted them with freezers and bells to sell Good Humor Ice Cream Suckers. The company changed hands over the decades and was bought in 1961 by Unilever.

In 1978 Good Humor, faced with rising gasoline and insurance prices and labor problems, stopped using commissioned employees and became a distributor that leased trucks to driver-owners.

There aren't many vendors other than ice cream trucks that come around to neighborhoods anymore, said McKenney.

"It's the mystique of the truck" that attracts people, McKenney said. "You used to have people going door-to-door" selling. "That's all gone. But the ice cream man brings you ice cream. You don't have to go to the mall or anything."

Yamali used to drive an ice cream truck himself and retains a lasting image of those sunny afternoons. "It was the kids," he said. "They were running, running, running."