Gang Style Turf Wars Taking Place Between New York’s Iced Cream Trucks

The NY Times ran an article this morning highlighting the turf battle between Mister Softee and New York Iced Cream trucks, something I never knew existed.

As a child, I viewed the iced cream truck guy as sanctimonious. Little did I know, there was a dark, sinister side to him, territorial, like an organized crime racket.

Mister Softee says he has been muscled out of Midtown.

New York Ice Cream, staffed by drivers who used to cover Midtown Manhattan for Mister Softee, has had the area locked down for at least a year, Mister Softee said. The renegade is enforcing its dominance with threats and intimidation that sometimes get physical.

“If one of my drivers goes to Midtown, they’ll bring their trucks in and surround them — a bunch of guys,” said Peter Bouziotis, who runs the Softee depot in the Bronx, which covers Manhattan. “They’ll start banging on the windows.”

At the corner of 40th Street and Seventh Avenue in Times Square, a New York Ice Cream man in the window of his purple-trimmed white truck was unapologetic.

“From 34th to 60th Street, river to river, that’s ours,” he said on a recent afternoon, moments after handing a chocolate cone to a delighted-looking little boy. The vendor would not allow his name to be published for fear of losing his job.

“You will never see a Mister Softee truck in Midtown,” he continued. “If you do, there will be problems, and you won’t see him there very long.”

Boxing in a Softee truck so the driver cannot do business. Getting up in his face. Grabbing his collar and delivering some unsolicited advice.

“Happens all the time,” the New York Ice Cream man said.

New York Ice Cream’s founder, Dimitrios Tsirkos, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Mister Softee’s vice president, Jim Conway, said the company had urged its drivers to retake the heart of the city, to no avail.

“Corporately, we would love to see people go in there; we consider it wide open territory, and anyone would do great selling there,” Mr. Conway said. “The issue is that people just fear for their safety.”

Every truck has a baseball bat inside of it. The human species is a plague.