This is a little piece of our history.

First off Ryan and I would like to thank our parents, Bill and Frieda Burke, for helping us get started.  Because, honestly can you think of a legitimate bank that would give a loan to a couple of kids, 12 and 15 who want to start a business that has never been tried before?  No you say?  Well neither could we.

We started The Ice Cream Boat in May of 2000.  I (Travis) was 15 and my brother Ryan was 12 when we started.  Since then the business has improved and grown year by year.  This will be our 6th summer in business and I thought it was about time we had a website, I mean everyone else does...why not The Ice Cream Boat, right?

We started with our Dad's pontoon boat, ice cream signs, a new Honda generator, a new storage freezer, and our parents help.  The first summer we started all we had to grab peoples attention was a small bell and a music horn we got at Radio Shack.  Our second summer we were able to track down a real music box.  Ever since then people know it is us when they hear the song, our signature tune is "Music Box Dancer".  We also play "Happy Birthday" for birthday parties, we wish it had "Here Comes the Bride" because we seem to have more people asking us to come to wedding receptions and parties than birthdays anymore.  Occasionally if we are coming home really late at night we will play "Rock A Bye Baby" very low, this doesn't mean we are closed for business, we just don't want to wake up and bother people who are already in bed.  On a good day, no wind, people say they can hear the music anywhere from 30-45 minutes before they see us.

In past few years we have made several changes to the original design of The Ice Cream Boat.  Each year we tweak it just the smallest bit more to make it more efficient.  For the most part it is now a completely different boat than it was 6 years ago, it's now an ice cream selling machine.  Designed to handle any situation that is presented to it, it hasn't failed us yet.  Here is a short list of some of the things we have done to it over the years:

Early pictures of the Boat

Here are some interesting ice cream boat Facts

2000:  We started with Dad's 20ft pontoon boat, that had a 1992 40hp Oil Injected Yamaha on it, not the "ideal" ice cream selling machine but it was something to start with and that's what counted.  We started by adding a section to the roof to keep the Nestlé freezer out of the sun and weather.  We then started drilling holes in the side of the boat to put the signs we got, on the boat.  Next we placed the generator in the middle of the boat right in front of the rear "couch".  We found there was going to be a problem with the exhaust exiting right into the boat, so our neighbor designed and fabricated an exhaust system that went up and exited through the back of the roof.  Then we decided we needed some way for people to notice us, catch their attention, if you will.  Think about it for a moment, if we didn't have that song playing over the loud speakers would you have ever known we existed?  Odds are no, and that's exactly what we found, so we went in search of some sort of "noise making device" and found it by way of an antique dealer in Salem, Va. who had an old bell.  So we did a little test, very scientific you see, dad said "Go to the other of the store", I did and he rang the bell and yelled "Can you hear it?".  Well to make a long story short I did hear it.  And so the ice cream bell that Ryan and myself have grown to despise, was born.  I say despise because Dad rang that bell ALL day long, whether there was someone within earshot of it or not.  He would even try to  play little tunes on it, and we would try to guess what song it was.  Well anyway, our first year wasn't very eventful and other than those few modifications the boat was pretty much "stock".  I just thought I would note, this was the year of the "drought" when the lake was down approx. 6 feet.  When we look back now, we are all pretty much in agreement that if it hadn't been so hot that first summer we wouldn't have had enough business to keep us going.

2001: Well, with one full summer under our belt we were ready to start tweaking the boat a little.  Our first summer we had found it very cumbersome trying to move around the boat with the generator sitting in the middle of the floor like it was, and the seat Ryan and Dad were sitting on was hardly big enough for them to be comfortable.  Although the exhaust system worked like a charm, the pipe got EXTREMELY HOT (we all found that out the HARD way).  The generator was also very very loud, so we had gotten into the habit of shutting it down for every stop, which wasn't good for the generator or the freezer.  So with all that in mind we started by completely stripping the interior of the boat, other than the driver's console which couldn't be moved.  Then we started looking at different options for placement of seats and the generator.  When we finished the boat looked nothing like it did when we started.  I had swapped out my captain's chair for the small bench seat that Ryan and Dad sat on.  For them we brought one of the halves from the couch forward for them to sit on (the other half we stored in the boat house).  We still had plenty of storage for all our life jackets, ropes, and miscellaneous "stuff".  Next we moved the generator to the back left corner of the boat (as far away from me as possible), now without the couch across the back of the boat we had plenty of room to get to the engine and gas tanks.  Then the mail came on day, and it was the music box we had tracked down.  We got some loudspeakers on clearance at Radio Shack and the rest, well the rest is history.  Those were about the only changes we made that year.  As far as the summer went though, this was the year that it rained on us about 65-70% of the days we went out.  It was a bad summer for us, because of the rain.  We were lucky though, because with the first summer having been good for us we had just about paid back Dad, the money he loaned us to get started (minus the cost of the boat, he gave that to us).  So by the end of our second summer we were for the most part debt free.  Other than a little bit, that we stilled owed on our second storage freezer and the music box.  This was also the summer that Betty Brown, a local sketch artist contacted us and wanted to draw a picture of the boat, we agreed.

2002: This was a big year for changes to the boat.  After two years on the lake, we were starting to get a good feel for the things we needed to work on to make the boat just a little bit better suited for what we were doing.  Although we had moved the generator to the back of boat, it was still very loud.  So I started by designing and building a "sound proof" box to encase the generator.  While I was working on that, I took into account the trip we made to the fire works display on the 4th of July.  Biggest mistake we ever made, we spent hours the following week putting lights allover the boat so we could be seen at night and people could read our menu.  We made 2 sales the entire time we were there, we spent most of our time with a boat that had broken down and just wanted to use our ship-to-shore radio...the best part was that they didn't even buy ice cream.  Well to make a long story short, in all the confusion (there were so many boats we couldn't see buoys or shore) we ended up going into black water.  That doesn't sound too bad, except for the fact that we live on the Roanoke River, below the bridge.  To make a long story shorter, we didn't get home 'til about 2am and we were all soaked.  I have never seen such waves in my entire life, I'll be honest, I was scared.  So my nickels worth of advice to anyone thinking about going to see the fireworks.  Its nice and all, but its not worth it, trust me.  So while we were in the middle of this mess, we realized that the generator was dangerously close to being under water.  So with that in mind I built a stand for the generator to sit on before I built the enclosure.  Now, you would think that 3/4" plywood, 2 1/2" rubber, carpet, and ceiling tile would be enough to drown out the noise of anything.  Well you'd be wrong, along with me.  All that enclosure did was make the noise, bearable.  With the enclosure though, the engine couldn't cool as efficiently as it had before, so I put a large box fan on one end that blows air through it (the fan runs on the ac current the generator produces).  Next, I moved the loud speakers from where we had originally placed them.  Originally they were right above us on either side of the boat.  This was very unpleasant for us, and it wasn't very effective, as the sound only traveled out perpendicular to the boat.  So basically only the people we were passing by would hear, and they didn't have much of an opportunity to decide if they wanted ice cream.  So I moved the speakers to the very front of the boat.  It was more pleasant for us and more effective in that people in front of the boat could now hear the music sooner.  The next change I made was a platform on the front of the boat, to cover the bare pontoons that stuck out the front.  I did this for two reasons: 1. In some situations I am forced to pull straight into a dock (that is put the front of the boat against the dock and leave the boat in gear to hold it there) and if I wasn't careful the pontoons could put gouges in the dock  2. In those such situations, there was a gap of about 18 inches between the boat decking and the dock, enough room for a small child or someone else to fall through.  This was also the first time that we were in the news.  This was the summer that we got into; The Laker Magazine and The Smith Mountain Eagle.  It was kind of strange for us, here we had been in business for going on 3 years virtually unnoticed other than our customers and Betty Brown.  Then within a week we had appointments with two reporters to do interviews.  As far as the summer went, the "sound proof" box helped out and moving the speakers helped also.  Now we could barely hear each other (mind you we are approx. 3ft apart) when we yelled at the top of our lungs.

2003: This was a pretty uneventful year as far as changes to the boat.  As I recall, we only made a few little changes that year.  We added lights to the interior of the boat so we could see at night.  Put up some new advertising materials.  We kept losing our Nestlé signs on the side of the boat in thunder storms.  The only problem was that they had quit making that design of the signs, everything now has Häagen-Dazs ice cream on it also (that stuff is too expensive for us).  So I made sign brackets for the sides of the boat that have metal reinforcement strips that go along the back side of the signs to make them stronger.  We also added headlights, to help us with docking the boat at night.  This being our 4th season we were becoming more popular and as such our hours were getting longer, which was good for us.  This was also the first summer we started handing out business cards, with our phone number and email address.

2004: This summer started the same as the others, but it was the most eventful by far.  We made a few little changes to the boat at the beginning of the summer, not enough to really talk about.  Just some new headlights, Nestlé signs, and a few paint repairs.  The first part or the summer was for the most part normal.  A little busier than the past summer, but that is normal each year we get a little bit busier.  We got into another newspaper, this time The Richmond Times Dispatch, this article however made it into about 23 other newspapers throughout Virginia, by far the most coverage we had ever received.  Then about mid-July our outboard started acting up and cutting out, it just didn't have enough power to push us.  We're still not sure exactly what happend, but the engine was now 12 years old and had, we figure, between 5 and 6 thousand hours on it, and deserved to be retired).  So we (Dad, Ryan, and myself) had to sit down and for the first time have a "real business conference".  We had a huge problem, and no foreseeable solution, to fix the engine would be around $1,200 (a lot of money for us) and then it couldn't be guaranteed that it would last much longer after that, the lower unit could go anytime we didn't know.  Plus, we didn't know how long it would take to fix it.  Here we are, mid-July (our best month) with out an engine.  So we decided for the time being we would put my brand new engine on it.  I had bought a new Yamaha 40hp Two-Stroke the December before, that I was no where near paying off.  This was a hard decision for me because I hadn't even had the chance to really "break it in" yet and here we were going to strap it on the ice cream boat and run it hard 8-12 hours everyday for who knew how long.  So after we made that decision (it was about all we could do, trust me if there had been another option I would have jumped at it), we went down to the dock put my boat in the lift.  Removed MY BRAND NEW engine (hardly broken in, and nowhere near paid for) from my boat, put my boat back in the boat house.  Then we put the ice cream boat in the lift, took its engine off (it still ran, but we couldn't trust it anymore), and put that engine in the boat house for the time being.  Then we CAREFULLY (I did not want even a smudge to get on it) put my engine on the ice cream boat.  I wired it back together, and lowered it down to start it.  The whole process took us about 2 1/2 hours (we were really rushing to get it done).  Then we ran into a little problem, my engine required a "push to open" control box, and the one on the ice cream boat was a "pull to open".  So now I had to go take the control box off my boat that I had spent literally hours putting on just right, and hiding the wiring.  All that took another 1 1/2 hours or so, and we were ready to go.  We didn't even miss a beat, we were out selling ice cream the very next day (taking it easy on my engine mind you).  Dad and Ryan, were all for leaving my engine on there for the rest of the summer and taking care of the problem over the winter (if it had been their brand new engine on the boat and not mine, I would have said the same thing) but that would have meant approx. 300-400 hours on my engine.  I wanted my engine back and soon.  So we talked about it and decided we would talk to Parrot's Cove about buying a new engine from them (they have always been good to us, that's where Dad originally bought the boat in 1992).  They quoted us a price, we talked about it, and once again we were forced to borrow money from Dad.  We decided on a new 2005 Yamaha 50hp High-Thrust engine, by far the biggest decision we have ever made in regards to the ice cream boat.  The engine arrived about a month later, right after we got back from our yearly trip to Ocean City, Md.  I didn't spare one second in getting my engine back on my boat, we had put about 180 hours on it (the power trim has never worked quite right since) but I didn't have much of a choice.  I couldn't pay for my engine unless we used it so I could go out and make the money to keep paying for it.  With this new engine we wanted to things right, so we took all morning putting it on and wiring it up.  Then I spent the rest of the day breaking it in (4 strokes are easier and much less involved to break in than 2 strokes).  We were out on the lake the very next day.  By now it was almost time for school to start again.  Then one day, we were cruising around with our new engine, it was kind of a slow day because school was starting soon.  We made the turn to go behind the island and if you want to hear the rest of this story ask us in person, then you'll know why I didn't want to put it on here.  The rest of the year was pretty much uneventful, we put about 130 hours on the new engine.  As far as I know we were the first to ever have that particular engine, it was a special engine because this was the first time a 50hp had ever come with fuel injection.

2005: We made a big change to the boat in 2005.  As most of you are well aware, the boats on the lake are getting progressively bigger and BIGGER.  And as such the wakes we encounter on the lake are getting bigger and BIGGER.  On a given day would used to get "swamped" an average of 3-5 times a day, we were just to darn heavy with all the stuff on the boat, we couldn't make it over the tops of the waves so they went over us.  We decided we had, had just about enough of that (Dad doesn't like to get wet, I thought it felt good to get cooled off).  One day the summer before we had come across a man who had added an extra pontoon to his boat, we were very intrigued to say the least.  He later contacted us with the information about the company.  I did some research and we decided to order one of there plastic foam filled models (one of the best decisions we ever made).  When we finally got the right one we ordered, we quickly put it together and put it under the boat.  This step wasn't quite as easy as I make it out to be, it was actually quite difficult to get it put together straight and put it under there straight.  We're all very happy with the results though.  The boat sits about 5 inches higher in the front and about 3 inches higher in the rear now.  It will actually "plane out" now too, we never imagined it would do that.  Now we only get swamped about once a week, on average.  I also added some new menus and pictures to the front and top of the boat, to help when we pull straight into a dock.  Then one day, while changing the oil, I noticed we had somewhat of a large problem on our hands.  Our new engine, with its "high thrust" was causing the aluminum on the transom to rip.  It was getting dangerously close to completely freeing itself.  Although our boat was rated for a 75hp engine, the high thrust adds a little something extra that the transom couldn't handle.  So we made an appointment with Parrot's Cove's sister business, Key Craft Cruisers' welder.  We took the transom off the boat.  I took it to them early one morning, and within 6 hours we had the engine and transom back on the boat.  We also experimented with the exhaust on the generator a little bit.  We ran it underwater, to see if that would quiet it down any.  It works surprising well, while sitting still the water muffles it enough to actually hear people's orders.  The neat part though is that, when we start moving, around 10mph or so, the water uncovers the pipe and it runs wide open (it sounds like a Donzi or a motorcycle).  We put about 600 hours on the outboard in 2005, and it's still running strong.

2006-2007: We didn't change anything for 2006 or 2007.  We have finally created, dare I say, the perfect ice cream selling machine.  2006 however, we did have to buy another generator, we got about 3,600 hours out of the old one (it still works, it just burns a little oil).