Ice Cream Man Swaps Jingle for Some Skynyrd

PEORIA, IL — Despite the state of the country as a whole, it is still summer. A time for relaxing, enjoying the weather, and maybe even grabbing an ice cream or two. For Jerry McCullin, driver of The Ice Cream Wagon Summers like these would usually be a gold mine. But for some reason, business has been slow this year. 

“Usually I start making my rounds in mid June,” said McCullin. “But this year I started cruising the normal spots and there’s nothing. After my third day of coming back home with a full truck I decide that maybe it’s just too early. So I put everything in deep freeze till the fourth of July. Usually one of my busiest days of the summer. But this year I sold more under the counter vapes than ice cream. I had no clue what was going on.”

For an unknown reason, Jerry was having one of his worst summers on record. He was ready to throw in the towel and let those jerks at the library finally turn his truck into a book mobile. But during his daily reading of The Wall Street Journal, Jerry read something interesting. 

“They had this article about the effects of music on shoppers in retail stores. I’d known about this for a long time of course. I’ve had a giant speaker on top of my truck, Pavloving kids since the 90’s. But what was interesting was that studies have shown that different music affects different shoppers. I’ve been playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" for over 3 decades now. It’s not that kids don’t want ice cream anymore, I just need an auditory trigger better suited for today's youth.” 

So Jerry set to work finding the perfect song to make kids drop whatever they were doing and run out into the street. After a painstaking process he found the perfect song. 

“I needed something with some urgency, but also some class. It had to be something that I wouldn’t mind listening to all day, but also something the kids would love. There was really only one option. Lynyrd Skynyrd. Any Lynyrd Skynyrd really. “Free Bird” was the obvious choice but anything from “Simple Man” to “That Smell” worked just as well. And boy did it work.” 

The change was instantaneous. His first day running the rounds with his new track list, Jerry made over $100,000 in ice cream sales. A number that topped his last two summers combined. Moving fast, Jerry quickly negotiated a deal with Lynyrd Skynyrd giving him the exclusive rights to run their songs on ice cream trucks. Within a few weeks, he had enough money to buy a whole fleet of ice cream trucks, all blasting Skynyrd. 

At press time, Jerry McCullin has retired from driving his truck, and has taken a new role as CEO of Second Helping INC. Which has quickly become one of the largest distributors of novelty ice cream products in the country. Sure we’ll still have the summer heat, and time off of school. But from now on, it truly won’t feel like summer, until an ice cream truck rolls down your block, blasting some Skynyrd.