8 weeks of procrastination, 24 hours to buy
Most people interested in starting a new ice cream truck would probably list “buy a truck” at the top of their priority list. Not me.
When I’m feeling generous, I’ll call myself a responsible entrepreneur, committed to doing my diligence; when I’m feeling less charitable, I’ll admit that I am a little trigger shy and can find creative ways to justify procrastination. Like… toiling over the mission statement and website landing page for of a business that exists only in my brain. Making sure to meet every local agency that could derail this venture, and trying to get their early buy-in. Writing about 80% of a business plan/financial model. Actually, make that 60%. Recipe testing, getting fingerprinted, a CORI (Criminal Offender Record Information) check, forming an LLC, setting up a bank account, more recipe testing, designing the interior of the truck, looking for commissary kitchen space (no, my recipes are not yet finalized), meeting potential vendors and distribution partners (a fancy way of saying “sampling lots of yummy food and drink for potential resale”), staying up til 2am making a scale cardboard model of all of the equipment I would need inside the truck to redesign and figure out exactly what size truck I need, more recipe testing.
Until suddenly it hit me that if I stayed the course, I’d have the most museum-worthy cardboard replica of an ice cream truck, but no actual vehicle out of which to sell any product, and nothing to explain the extra 10 pounds I had put on from recipe testing and lack of sleep. And so, I turned to Google.
And luckily just as quickly as I put together an elaborate 18-column spreadsheet to compare 15 trucks from at least 5 different online marketplaces that had met my criteria, I also realized that before wiring $12,000 to someone I had only once spoken to by phone, I should probably also do an online search for “xxx motor group sucks” and make sure I wasn’t about to get ripped off.
Turns out the leading contender truck was being sold by a business with a 1-star Yelp rating and a C- from the Better Business Bureau. I wisened up quickly and demanded to see a title for the vehicle as well as a video of the vehicle that showed the VIN number, interior, and exterior of the stepvan, taken all in one shot before I wired over the money. They stopped calling me back.
In eight weeks this was my second reminder to fail quickly and move on. Plan B: figure out how these dealers were getting their inventory of used fleet trucks, and go right to the source. This time Google led me to GovDeals.com, and instead of an elaborate spreadsheet, I used my email drafts folder to store information about eight trucks, none of which I actually ended up bidding on, but ultimately led — 24 hours later — to me winning an auction for this beauty:





Next step: figure out how to transport a truck from a post office parking lot in Memphis, TN to a food truck builder in Rochester, NY — maybe even without having to step foot on an airplane…??
