An ice cream van (British) or ice cream truck (North American) is a commercial vehicle that serves as a mobile retail outlet for ice cream, usually during the spring and summer. Ice cream vans are often seen parked at public events, or near parks, beaches, or other areas where people congregate. Ice cream vans often travel near where children play — outside schools, in residential areas, or in other locations. They usually stop briefly before moving on to the next street. Along the sides, a large sliding window acts as a serving hatch, and this often displays pictures of the available products and their prices. Most ice cream vans tend to sell both pre-manufactured ice pops in wrappers, and soft serve ice cream from a machine, served in a cone, and often with a chocolate flake (in Britain), a sugary syrup, or toppings such as sprinkles. While franchises or chains are rare within the ice cream truck community (most trucks are independently owned and run), some do exist. In some locations, ice cream van operators have diversified to fill gaps in the market for soft drinks, using their capacity for refrigerated storage to sell chilled cans and bottles. History Early ice cream vans carried simple ice cream, during a time when most families did not own a freezer. As freezers became more commonplace, ice cream vans moved towards selling novelty ice cream items, such as bars and popsicles. A distinctive feature of ice cream vans is their melodic chimes, and often these take the form of a famous and recognizable tune. Ice cream truck songs in the United States include "The Band Played On", "Camptown Races", "Cuckoo Waltz", "The Entertainer", "Home on the Range", "If You're Happy and You Know It", "La Cucaracha", "Little Brown Jug", "London Bridge Is Falling Down", "The Mister Softee Jingle", "Music Box Dancer", "Picnic" (a Japanese children's song usually played with a voice saying "hello" at the beginning of the song), "Pop Goes The Weasel", "Red Wing", "Sailing, Sailing", "Turkey in the Straw"/"Do Your Ears Hang Low?", "Wiegenlied (Brahms)", and "Yankee Doodle". In Australia, ice cream vans traditionally play "Greensleeves". In the United Kingdom There are mainly two types of ice cream vans in the United Kingdom: a hard van, which sells scoop ice cream and is only equipped with a freezer and a soft van, which has a freezer and also a soft serve