Run a Rural Ice Delivery Service

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Any construction site near you might also be worth looking into. A few years back, for example, a giant shopping mall was built about 40 miles from here, and the project employed almost 4,000 workers. An icehouse in the area brought them 6,000 pounds a day, six days a week, for a profit of $6,000 a month over the course of the one summer that work was in progress!

Factories can be fruitful places to sell, too. A few years back a glass plant in our town was plagued by constant ice-machine breakdowns, so the folks there ended up ordering from us instead. They never bought less than 2,500 pounds at a time, and they usually needed it three or four times a week! (Your ice can mean a lot to hardworking people. One summer, just as we drove up to a factory in our truck, the employees were walking out on strike because they didn't have cold drinking water. Everyone was mighty happy to see us that day . . . in fact, the foreman had his men unload for us.)

If you don't sell every prospect right away, don't be discouraged. Just keep taking any opportunity to pass out your business cards or notes stating your hours and phone number and the various forms of ice (such as block, crushed, bagged, or cubes) you offer. I suggest that you do not include specific prices on your cards and flyers, though. After all, you may need a little bargaining room when negotiating a potential sale . . . and besides, inflation can put a printed price schedule out of date almost overnight.

Even though many businesses may turn you down initially, there's a good chance that you'll hear from at least some of them sooner or later. For one thing, with the frequency of icemachine failures in any given summer, you're likely to get several "emergency" calls before the season is over. And if those customers receive good service from you, they may well decide that dealing with your firm is the best way to go after all.

Of course, you can drum up business without making personal visits. To lure in more customers, we've erected several signs—handpainted on 3' X 4' sheets of plywood, giving our phone number and brief directions to our icehouse—along the major roads leading to our place. We nailed the placards to fenceposts and telephone poles (after getting permission from the landowners, of course), and they've produced a sizable number of orders for us. Before you put up any boards, though, do check your local and state laws to see whether such advertising is allowed or a permit required. (We have to pay the state $2.00 per sign per year.)

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