Ice cream sales are off to a frosty start before summer as things heat up between Pennsylvania trucks vying for turf. Drivers battle--accused of running each other off lucrative, kid-filled roads.
It's a battle of who owns the road -- or the neighborhood kids -- as the spouse of one Uniontown, Pennsylvania, frozen treat vendor complains to local police that a an ice cream competitor has tried to run her husband's truck off the road.
Of course the other guy says it was, well, the other guy. He claims it was his ice cream truck that was nearly run off the road. That vendor's got another serious claim: he accuses the other PA ice cream truck driver of a serious charge of unfriendliness -- claiming that his good-humored "hello" was returned with an expletive, at high volume.
Tricks aren't for kids in Uniontown, PA: the police department has warned both drivers that the city could explore revoking their permits if they can't find a way to get along and share that turf. Now that's serious biz.
If anyone believes that Ice cream vendor turf battles only get quite so heated in Pennsylvania, a California situation last year sheds new light: less than a year ago, last summer, a San Diego truck vendor was arrested over an ice cream argument involving a knife.
Released on $25,000 bail, police accuse the truck driver of threatening another ice cream vendor. Reminiscent of mob tales, the male San Diego ice cream vendor would only acknowledge "talking" with a female ice cream vendor.That "talk" took place on a side street with a bit of a dead end -- in a cul-de-sac. While the vendor denies threats, he's alleged to have told the other driver "to get off his turf" -- and kind of, sort of, may have had a knife in his hand. Unfortunately for the ice cream guy, police discovered a knife in his truck.
The other ice cream truck driver happened to be female -- a woman who says she hadn't believed she was violating "the unwritten code". It all just goes to prove, once again: there's an "unwritten code" for pretty much everything in life.