The Good Humor Truck
During our trip to Lancaster County Pennsylvania this summer, we rode the historic train in Strasburg. As part of their railroad grounds exhibition, was a Good Humor ice cream truck. It stood there as if it had rolled out of our 1950s neighborhood.
The story of the Good Humor truck begins in Youngstown, Ohio in 1920, when Harry Burt invented a chocolate-covered ice cream bar on a stick. His family loved it and he knew he had created something new. He called it the “Good Humor Bar” because there was an old belief that one’s humor or mood could be lifted by sweets.
Burt was determined to bring this ice cream directly to children, so he outfitted 12 Model T trucks with insulated cold boxes. He dressed his drivers in crisp white uniforms and bow ties. These trucks became the first mobile ice cream fleet in America delivering ice cream right to the curb.
The trucks introduced several innovations that became icons in American life. Each truck had jingling bells that would signal the children that the truck was coming. The ice cream bars had a standard price of 5 cents. The driver wore a uniform and there were neighborhood routes that were predictable.
By the 1950s and 60s, there were over 2,000 trucks crisscrossing neighborhoods nationwide. Seeing the Good Humor truck this summer in Pennsylvania brought back those summer memories when these ice cream trucks would roll through the neighborhood ringing its bells. The ice cream tasted as delicious now as it did when we were children.
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