Anybody owen a Ice House Of America or Mr.Zippy's?

[QuarterGuy]

Anybody own a Ice House Of America or Mr.Zippy's?

I'm thinking of buying a ice machine to put next to a car wash. Which one did you buy and how did you figure out what they should make?
Can you get a idea by taking a percentage of traffic count? They seem too high priced for what they are. Anybody have a used one for sale? Thanks

 

[raisetheprice]

We have two of the Twice the Ice. I like the machines, lot less issues than the carwash so far. It's a small amount of work keeping the front of the machine clean, bags, couple of filters now & then, and sanitizing everything regularly. If you opt for the water vendor, you have to pass a test and have the drinking water tested every 90 days. The only complaint that I really don't like, there are 2 tubes that hold $1 coins in the coin mech for change. You have to constantly have $1 coins on hand to keep them full. People pull of there and pop a $10 in and get 1 $1.75 bag of ice. It's hard to train folks to come back and spend their dollar coins they got in change last time they were there.

I don't think the Zippys is the way to go:

http://forum.autocareforum.net/showthread.php?t=2411

We're in Central Texas and the winter months were almost dead. Looking forward to the summer.

 

[QuarterGuy]

Raisetheprice

What kind of market research did you do to determine that the ice machines you have would work at your location?

Thanks