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Ice machine idea reaps cold, hard cash

By Associated press
Published October 2, 2005

ATLANTIC BEACH - Buddies Harry Jackson and Jim Skipwart loaded two coolers filled with 20 pounds of ice apiece into the back of a truck off Atlantic Boulevard. Price tag for their haul of ice: $2.50.

The two were going fishing near Gainesville and needed to keep food and beer cold during the trip. They fed the money into the large white machine next to Fisherman's Seafood & Bait, pulled the lever and watched the ice fill both coolers.

"It's a lot more convenient than going in a store, and it's twice the ice," Jackson said. "It's a wonder someone didn't come up with this idea a long time ago. Whoever came up with it is going to make a million dollars."

Actually, they did.

Jacksonville businessman Bob Alligood, president of Ice House America, bought the design of the automated ice-dispensing units from two Georgia farmers in early 2003 for $1-million, plus a percentage of gross sales for 20 years.

Since July 2004, the company has sold 190 units in 12 states, and the company expects more than 225 to be operating by the end of the year. In Florida, the machines have only made it as far south as Martin County, but expect to be operating in South Florida by next summer.

The Ice House units go way beyond the ice-making machines you might find in a motel corridor or the ice coolers common to grocery or convenience stores. They are 24 feet long, 8 feet wide and 9 feet high.

"Really, there's nothing like it," Alligood said. "There will be, I'm sure, but we'll enforce our patent."

Unit owners typically rent space from shopping centers or owners of land near spots where ice is needed. In Florida, property owners typically charge unit owners $450 to $500 a month for the 200 square feet needed for the $92,000 units.

Alligood expects the average Ice House unit owner to break even in about 21/2 years. The company has 24 dealers who operate or sell units in 12 states and the Bahamas. The dealers pay a one-time fee of between $45,000 and $250,000 for their territories, depending on the populations.

Ice House units sell 16-pound bags of ice, or 20 pounds unbagged, for $1.25. The bagged price is about 50 percent of the typical supermarket price.

The company's manufacturing plant in Moultrie, Ga., is capable of building two units a day. But the plant is now building about 20 units a month, staying 10 to 15 units ahead of orders, Alligood said.

That surplus gave the company the capacity to react when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The company sent two of its ice makers to the Houston Astrodome where the ice they produce is keeping water, juices and milk chilled and has machines ready for delivery to Mississippi and Louisiana once a spot to put them is found. The machines will be on loan as long as they're needed.

Archie Harris, spokesman for the International Packaged Ice Association, said similar, partially automated ice-making machines were tried 30 to 40 years ago and flopped because of maintenance problems.

"It's what I call a maintenance nightmare," Harris said.

But Alligood said his units include switches that, if not tripped in the proper sequence, send a malfunction signal through the telephone lines to owners. Initially, the company received two maintenance calls a day. That's down to a recent rate of two calls every 10 days, he said.

Alligood, a Moultrie native and former engineering firm executive, operated a financial consulting firm for a couple of years before retiring in 1992. Two years ago, family members told him about the automated ice-making unit invented by two local men.

One of them, Moultrie resident Donald Dalton, quit farming after a heart transplant and opened a fish market in 1993. He had an ice maker to keep his fish cold and sold surplus ice to his customers.

As a customer convenience, Dalton built a partially automated conveyor-belt system onto the machine so that it delivered bagged ice 24 hours a day when activated by a dollar bill. After a move to Florida, Dalton returned home and teamed up with his cousin, Lavon Stripling, to build another ice maker.

Then in 1999, Dalton and Stripling began designing and building the first automated unit in Moultrie. Stripling, a 59-year-old peanut and cotton farmer, said he got some of his design ideas from a cotton gin.

The cousins built five units, which were placed in the Moultrie area. But they noticed the telephone number listed on the units for customer assistance was generating more business inquiries than complaints, Dalton said.

[Last modified October 2, 2005, 01:57:16]