An ice cream van (British) or ice cream truck is a commercial vehicle that serves as a cold-food specialty food truck or a mobile retail outlet for pre-packaged ice cream, usually during the spring and 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, a sugary syrup, or toppings such as sprinkles. While franchises or chains are rare within the ice cream truck community, some do exist.
Hollywood Cone Soft ice cream truck in Toronto, Ontario
Ice cream van at the Senate Square in Helsinki, Finland
Vintage ice cream truck in Harper Woods, Michigan, United States
A Wall's ice cream Ford Transit van parked in Clacton, England
A food truck is a large motorized vehicle or trailer equipped to store, transport, cook, prepare, serve, and/or sell food.
A Chevrolet Step-Van food truck in Ithaca, New York near Cornell University
A Mexican lunch wagon serving tortillas and refried beans to workers at a pecan shelling plant
A hot dog truck in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan in the late 1970s or early 1980s
The Maximus/Minimus food truck in Seattle, Washington in 2010