Custom Ice Cream Trucks for All Budgets - Karpatia Trucks (2024)

As practical as it gets – simply cut and mount the service window, place a chest freezer, and you’re almost good to go. Of course you’ll want (and get) food truck quality flooring, wall insulation, a raised roof so you can stand upright, and A/C, but that’s about it.

Cabinetry for dry goods like your cups and cones and other work surfaces are provided on request but how we do it is entirely up to you – it is a custom ice cream truck after all.

Greatly practical in an old shuttle bus is that they often have efficient A/C pre-installed from their passenger carrying days that can run on the engine.

Coupled with the relatively limited power consumption of all your freezer needs (limited vs. a truck that has deep fryers or ovens) you can run pretty autonomous routes with an ice cream truck, using only the engine and the smallest of generators. If routes are short it is even possible to keep everything frozen without actually turning on the freezer.

The all familiar all-American ice cream truck is a converted step van, usually Chevy or Utilimaster. If we go brand new, top-of-the-line, high-end then a Morgan Olson Foundation Food Truck may be better suited for your frozen custard needs.

Exactly how custom your ice cream truck needs to be is your decision. Whether you serve hard serve or soft serve ice cream, anything else a custom ice cream truck really needs is cabinetry, freezers, refrigerators and a small generator.

This means that you are not shelling out the big bucks for equipment. The price of a custom ice cream truck using a base step van is influenced mostly by the base truck used and how much work we decide together we should do on that. If you are not moving the truck all the time and your city has no laws on allowed emissions, an older 80’s or 90’s step van with a little TLC service to the engine and a brand new vinyl wrapping might be just what you need.

Are you going for a loud, kid-friendly design, or aiming at a wider clientele and putting more emphasis on your flavors, sourcing, and production? Your branding will have to reflect that and be more subtle too.

Let us know what that custom ice cream truck you’re dreaming of looks like and we’ll get a quote ready for you as soon as possible.

Ice cream can be a pretty uniform product, especially if you are selling shaved ice, soft serve or pre-packaged ice cream. You differentiate yourself through the branding, look, and feel of your business and ice cream truck. There are few betters ways to do that than going for a high class vintage food truck.

Every single classic truck or van out there can have an epiphany and be born again as a vintage ice cream truck. We frequently stock Citroen Type H vans, Volkswagen T1/T2 kombi’s, Peugeot J7’s, and Mercedes Benz Vario, but there are many more vintage options out there. You just need to go out and look on Craiglist or classic car sites and tell us all about that beauty you found and we can sketch up a conversion for you.

Alternatively, we are happy to go hunting for you if you brief us on a style or era of vintage ice cream truck you want, and we will present several choice options for conversion custom sourced just for you.

A great way to add to the unique and high-end branding of a vintage ice cream truck is by carefully sourcing some premium quality farmers’ ice cream from a local supplier, or offer more than traditional ice cream, such as trendy ice cream rolls.

It is not always sunny in vintage ice cream truck-land. Space is more limited than in a more modern and practical box truck or step van. Larger US metro areas often have restrictive food truck regulations automatically excluding some older models. Transportation is best done on a trailer, not by driving the truck, adding some small extra hassle you would not have with a step van.

Spoilage is not a huge issue with ice cream trucks and neither is “flow”, industry lingo for the efficient assembly line of products in a food truck. What is unique to ice cream trucks is that you are a traffic hazard that will be held responsible for accidents with kids and bystanders even if you are acting responsibly and it is just the drivers passing without triple checking that you are not.

Create a standard procedure for what you do when you stop. Make sure to have big loud stop signs and indications on the truck that you will make frequent and irregular stops like a delivery van. Never sell with the concession window to the street side, always face the curb.

Greatly take the seasonality of sales in to account if financing your truck! Make sure the financier accommodates this. The overly large part of all your revenue for ice cream truck operators outside of the sun belt happens in 4-5 months of the year so it makes sense to pay off more of the financing in those months than around Christmas when you’re not able to sell a single cone.