The Ice-Man
By: Garrett Moore
Tags: Business, Ice, Canada, New Brunswick, Self Employed

The Ice-Man

Guillaume Leger runs a modern business with a storied past

The machine responsible for Leger’s 3 A.M. days.

Haute-Aboujagane — It’s 3 a.m., mid-June, the peak season for ice manufacturers. Guillaume Leger gets out of bed to begin his day.

He got back from deliveries at 11 p.m. last night.

He needs to check the ice-machine and jostle the deposit bin. A breakdown lasting one day in the peak summer months could set him back a week or more. A three-minute walk down the road through the dark, early morning air brings him around to the warehouse.

The mess of hoppers, augurs, tubes, and fans that make up the ice machine are whirring. The rumble of ice falling into the mostly full bin signals to him the ice machine is still working. A quick double-check confirms this.

Time for breakfast.

For most, this schedule sounds crazy.

And it is.

“One time I hired one of my buddies and he came in the first two or three days and one morning I got in,” Leger said. “I was waiting for him, it was only four in the morning, they came into the house. He was white as a ghost. I said, ‘Where did you go last night? Did you go drinking?’ He said no, ‘I don’t know how you’re doing it.’ He said, ‘I gotta sleep.’ He lasted two days.”

Leger grew up helping his father run milk routes for Baxter Dairies. While his father woke up at two in the morning to milk the cows, Leger would follow to help get the stock ready for shipment.

After nearly three decades working these routes with his father, Leger took over.

“Before I started the ice, I had two milk runs, and I remember I started at one o’clock [a.m.], because I did two runs. Crazy hours.” Leger said.

Working for Baxter’s wasn’t quite enough for Leger. He began asking: What could he sell on the side with the milk?

“So, I knew all the clients held all the stores down here. It’s all like, it’s really local. And everybody knows each other. So I was doing the milk and I was always thinking, like, what could I put in my truck to sell?”

As it happened, one of his customers never seemed to have enough ice.

“I was going to see him doing his milk. And then was always saying like, oh, ‘I’m outta ice,’ and is always bitching at the ice company down there. So I said, ‘Well what if I go get an ice machine? Would you buy it from me?’ He said, ‘Yep, no problem.’ ”

And from there, Twice the Ice began with a $500 hotel ice machine bought from Kijiji that could produce about 15 bags a day.

Leger’s first customer bought around 90 bags a year. Leger had a 1000 bag excess.

“So that was doing all my milk customers again. I was going there and said I gotta get rid of that ice. So was asking all my milk customers, ‘Would you buy ice for me?’ ”

Leger continued to build. Purchasing chest freezers off of Kijiji for the new customers he gained, in three years, he’d grown to 15 customers.

Eventually, he traded his snowmobile for an industrial ice machine, which left him supplying more than the demand was. And the cycle continued.

“And then that’s how we started. Started buying more freezers and I was still doing the milk too.” Leger said. “And I could always put a pallet of ice on my milk run, too. So it was like it was free money kind of. Just going with the milk and doing it at the same time.”

Whether knowingly or not, Leger had entered into a storied history in his decision to begin delivering ice.

The ice business used to be much more adventurous, if not much more dangerous occupation. Natural ice was harvested from ponds and lakes around the countryside by ice dealers like Leger. Each block of ice was either painstakingly sawed out by hand or a specially designed horse-drawn plow was drawn over it.

It was then brought in on sleighs and refrigerated ice boxes to be served directly to customers. This was the dominant method of collecting and selling ice throughout the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. However, after World War 1, ice merchants began making artificial ice, or ice made in plants by pumping water in to freeze in commercial freezers

Compared to the early freezers and insulated ice houses, Leger’s ice machines today are something of a modern miracle. His machines are powered by Freon, a gas which, when compressed, turns to a cool liquid that takes the heat out of the air.

“It’s a big cylinder tube, probably 10 feet tall. And the water goes on top of it and it trickles down. There’s like 50 to 60 small tubes.in that big cylinder,” Leger said. “So when the water trickles down, it freezes slowly. Takes like 15 to 20 minutes to freeze. So when it reaches a certain pressure (it’s all about Freon) boom, it switches off and goes to defrost.”

Palette of ice, around 500 bags.

The defrost takes about three minutes to detach from the walls of the tubes that the water froze in. From there, these cores of ice fall into a cutter which cuts them into about an inch sized chunks before falling into a bin.

Each day produces about 10 tonnes of ice, roughly 3,000 3kg bags.

But with the growth in the ice business came competition, not only from New Brunswick.

Much of the ice businesses in New Brunswick cooperate to help each other out. If one breaks down, another will sell a load of ice to them to keep each other afloat.

The competition from outside the province comes from the Nova Scotia-based manufacturer, Party Ice.

“They’re big and they’re got lots of ice so they never run out,” Leger said, “I’ve got like seven or eight Sobeys in Moncton. So one year one Sobeys called me. He said I just want to give you a heads up. The competition came here and he offered us two fill-ups for free if we switch with him.”

To put it into perspective, a fill-up is around 400 bags of ice. Two fill-ups lands at roughly 800 bags, and with each bag selling for around three dollars, that’s roughly $2400 worth of free ice.

Leger said he was thankful when the manager said they didn’t accept the deal by Party Ice on account of Leger’s good service record.

Despite the competition, Twice the Ice has continued to enjoy growth, although commercial contracts are becoming hard to come across when in competition with Party Ice. Leger says he has no plans to become too big.

“A lot of people say keep it low,” Leger said. “You get more headaches if you go big. Like, I thought about the Circle K’s, to go see the Circle K’s, the same thing. You got to take them all. And I’m not plucky enough, I guess.”

Garrett Moore was born and raised in the United States. His life was changed one fateful day when a friend in the lunch line told him he should be a journalist. He has pursued his love of all types of storytelling since, developing his style, working for several publications, and marketing himself on YouTube. Now studying at St. Thomas University, he is double majoring in Journalism and Communications. This story was written for the Senior Seminar in Journalism.