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THE ICE-CREAM MERCHANTS CAR.

20th June 1922, Page 15
20th June 1922
Page 15
Page 15, 20th June 1922 — THE ICE-CREAM MERCHANTS CAR.
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THE adaptation of motor vehicles, especially those on light chassis, to particular trade requirements has frequently been noted in The Commercial Motor, and now that the summer season is upon us, and the public will soon be sweltering under the heat of a burning sun, -ice-cream merchants, or rather those of them who own motor vehicles, are haying -their cars embellished in all the gay colours, such as will not only attract attention but sell ices.

The ice-cream merchant has his vans built on fanciful lines. They strike a note of originality, and it is a strange fact that nearly all the single owners, chiefly Italians, seem to have worked out their own ideas as to what the superstructure should be.

Everybody, nowadays, is familiar with the gaily coloured barrow or the canopied horse-draym vehicle which conveys the ice-cream freezers. Very shortly they will .be—in fact they are now—a -thing of the past; the ice-cream merchant is awake to the possibilities of motor transport. He has his Ford vans to do the rough transport, collecting ice, etc., and taking it to the creamery. Their func• tion does not end 'there, for, in the-late mornings and, early afternoons, -they distribute the freezers to the various eetail establishments with whom they have contracts.

Of course, the manufacturer is a retailer as well, but instead of transacting his-business from any ordinary street corner site, he endeavours always to have his motorcar where the crowds are. The utility and business possibilities of the self-propelled unit are therefore obvious. The ice-cream motor vehicle serves places inaccessible by railway, and out of reach of the horse vehicle. Not only that, even at the seaside resorts which are tremendously popular, where sales are quickly made, and stocks exhausted in due ratio, the motor has only a fiveminute run or so to its local depot to replenish its needs, and is able to get back to its pitch with only a very small loss. of revenue compared with the horsed car. This fact will explain or, at any

rate, shed light on the various stories which have appeared in the daily Press as to the fabulous sums.paid by ice-cream merchants for pitches on seashores fronting the leading holiday resorts.

Our photograph shows the ornate treatnient of the Ford van of a Liveepool icecream merchant, and it may he taken as being typically representative of the cars used for retailing purposes at Pres, too, Blacknool. Southport, etc.

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Locations: Southport

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