page_title: Ice cream van
section_title: In the United Kingdom
hierarchical_section_title: Ice cream van / In the United Kingdom
caption_attribution_description: W1PPY 050611 CPS
context_page_description: An ice cream van or ice cream truck is a commercial vehicle that serves as a mobile retail outlet for ice cream, usually during the summer. Ice cream vans are often seen parked at public events, or near parks, beaches, or other areas where people congregate. Ice cream vans often travel near where children play — outside schools, in residential areas, or in other locations. They usually stop briefly before moving on to the next street. Along the sides, a large sliding window acts as a serving hatch, and this often displays pictures of the available products and their prices. Most ice cream vans tend to sell both pre-manufactured ice pops in wrappers, and soft serve ice cream from a machine, served in a cone, and often with a chocolate flake or a sugary syrup. While franchises or chains are rare within the ice cream truck community, some do exist.
  In some locations, ice cream van operators have diversified to fill gaps in the market for soft drinks, using their capacity for refrigerated storage to sell chilled cans and bottles.
context_section_description: There are mainly two types of ice cream vans in the United Kingdom: a hard van, which sells scoop ice cream and is only equipped with a freezer and a soft van, which has a freezer and also a soft serve "whippy" machine for serving ice cream cones and screwballs. They are usually converted from factory standard vans with the rear cut away and replaced with a fibre glass body (to reduce the weight).
  Because of the British climate, running an ice cream van profitably is not only very difficult outside summer, but is also an unpredictable business. A summer heatwave can provoke a massive upturn in fortunes for a few days, but after the weather has returned to a milder character sales drop off dramatically. The need to take advantage of rare and short-lived opportunities can result in fierce rivalry between ice cream vans in coterminous areas, with the main disputes being over who is entitled to sell ice cream in a particular 'patch'.  This has also led to some ice cream van vendors diversifying and selling other products such as crisps, chips, burgers or hot dogs from their vehicles at other times of the year.
  In a number of Local Authority areas, particularly in London Boroughs with existing street markets, street trading regulations prohibit ice cream vans from remaining in one static location. The legislation also contains powers to ban ice-cream vans from specific streets. Proposals in the current London Local Authorities Bill would allow only 15 minutes trading per vehicle per street each day. There also exists a nationwide code of practice for the use of chimes, which limits the volume to 80 dB and the duration to four seconds, but these are rarely observed nor enforced. Chimes must not be played more often than every three minutes, near hospitals, schools and churches when they are in use.
  Also in Scotland, ice cream vans have been used to sell smuggled cigarettes and, in the 1980s Glasgow Ice Cream Wars, as front organizations to sell illicit drugs.
caption: A Wall's ice cream Ford Transit van parked in Clacton, England.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "SONY DSC", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSLR-A550", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "DSLR-A550 v1.00", "Image DateTime": "2011:06:05 15:25:34", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "394", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[51, 49, 9453/2500]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "E", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[1, 9, 35856/625]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "0", "GPS GPSAltitude": "47482/731", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[14, 25, 35]", "GPS GPSSpeedRef": "M", "GPS GPSSpeed": "17275/11433", "GPS GPSMapDatum": "WGS-84", "GPS GPSDate": "2011:06:05", "Image GPSInfo": "44114", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 6, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "350", "Thumbnail YResolution": "350", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "44490", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "16716", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF Tag 0x882A": "1", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:06:05 15:25:34", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:06:05 15:25:34", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "203/25", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-3/10", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "217/50", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "50", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4592", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3056", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "44084", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "75", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard"}