There’s no sound that sounds more like summer than hearing a Mister Softee ice cream truck’s jingle, knowing that a cool, sweet treat is just steps away.
For the greater part of the past six decades, the analog tradition has been a staple of East Coast summers. The family-owned company was founded in 1956 in Philadelphia, but is now headquartered in Runnemede, New Jersey, and is known for its nostalgic vibes. However, even this iconic company is adapting to the digital age—it now has an app that helps customers track down the location of its 625 trucks across 18 states.
Available on both Apple’s App Store and Google Play, the program provides a real-time map of truck locations. Once you open the app, there’s no need to log in. Just hit “Skip,” and it will show the live locations of all the trucks out and about at the moment. Click onto the little truck logo and you can find how long that particular truck has been operating, as well as a list of its menu items.
When we pulled up the app on a Tuesday afternoon, we spotted 40 trucks in New York City’s Manhattan, a dozen in the Philadelphia area, 10 in the California Bay Area, four in South Carolina’s Myrtle Beach area, two each in the Orlando and Austin areas, as well as single trucks in Milwaukee and Memphis. Some were even in more unexpected areas, like three in Oxnard, California, and one each in Marietta, Georgia; Buda, Texas; and Mooresville, North Carolina.
Of course, using the app does take away the throwback tradition of waiting to hear the jingle, an earworm that was written around 1960 by Philadelphia’s Les Wass, who passed away in 2016. While he was told the tune would only be used on two or three trucks in South Jersey, it now rings from hundreds of vehicles, coast to coast.
The app originally debuted in 2020, but it’s gained much more popularity recently, after it relaunched this month. However, since the trucks are owned by 350 franchises, each owner has to opt into the app if they want their trucks’ locations displayed. That means there’s still a chance of happening upon a Mister Softee Truck that doesn’t appear on the app’s map. (Incidentally, while we were writing this story, we heard the truck in Hoboken, New Jersey, but didn’t see it appear on the app’s map.)
One Apple Store user named “Yasgurl” commented, “We couldn’t hear the ice cream truck anymore, so we decided we would chase it down … when we turned on the street, we found the truck. My dad even said, ‘Yeah, I’ll have to get that app too!’ It was like magic, will definitely be using it again.”
