Run a Rural Ice Delivery Service

Enlarge Image Image Gallery ABOVE, Left to right: Surprisingly enough, the process of setting a 300-pound, four-foot-high ""ice cube"" up on end or down on its side is relatively easy once you learn how... there's more skill involved than strength. BELOW, left to right: Our icehouse.. complete with bag vendor, crushing machine, loading platforms and hose for washing blocks; A flatbed truck with a hydraulic lift gate makes the job much easier; when upright, the slippery monoliths can be scooted into or out of the storeroom with very little effort.

You can "keep your cool" in the heat of summer with a refreshingly profitable home business!

by William L. Stewart

In 1964, after many years of factory work, my 62-year-old father retired . . . and immediately began to look for a way to make some extra money. And, since Dad had once been a commercial fisherman and crabber, we decided to break out his long unused nets and try fishing for our fortunes. However, when we brought our first day's catch home and set about getting it ready for sale, we suddenly realized that—because the town's icehouse had closed some years before—there was no block ice available within a 20-mile radius!

Well, we quickly reasoned that if we couldn't get ice easily, then neither could anyone else in our community. Fortunately, Dad and I already had a tiny cement building that we knew stayed pretty cool—in fact, we'd used it for cold-storing seafood—so we drove to the nearest operating icehouse, bought our first pickup load of frozen blocks, and trucked it back home. Voila! We were icemen . . . and although our original plan was to concentrate our efforts on supplying the area's sport and commercial anglers, we soon learned that our small operation could also do a brisk business servicing restaurants, construction projects, factories, and dozens of other customers that the nearest big-city companies didn't consider worthwhile to handle.

In other words, you're likely to find plenty of demand for ice, too, no matter where you live in this country. And you can start a simple delivery service—that is, you'd be buying ice from a large commercial plant and selling it, the same- day, to route customers—with little more than a pickup or trailer, some plastic holding tubs, a pair of tongs, and a supply of business cards!

I know a man in northern Pennsylvania, in fact, who started just that sort of shoestring operation several years ago. By keeping his costs to a minimum (he takes orders in advance and picks up only the amount of ice he knows he'll sell during any given day), the fellow has been able to earn a very good living indeed. Currently, he delivers 70 or so 50-pound containers of ice a day . . . and the three hours of work required to do that job nets him a hefty $150 to $200 daily!

A BACKYARD ICEHOUSE

Although having your own cold-storage facility at home isn't a requirement for getting started in the ice business, there are advantages to owning such a building: It does—for example—allow you to keep an inventory of your product, and that can cut out a lot of costly trips to your supplier (plus eliminate a good bit of loading and unload ing) . . . and with a little effort, you can build up a good list of regular walk-in customers as well as (or instead of, if you wish) a delivery route. So if you have the time and money to devote to the project, you should seriously consider buying or building a backyard icehouse.