How to Book The Cruisin' Cone For Events

Are you interested in booking The Cruisin' Cone for an event?  

Here are the details:

The Cruisin Cone is a 1950 International Metro Van that PJ Burchett restored starting in 2013. Since finishing the project in 2015, The Cruisin' Cone has received international attention due to its appearance in the 2015 SEMA Automotive Industry Show in Las Vegas. We have been the feature of stories in The Knoxville News Sentinel and on WBIR, PBS, and WVLT.  A wedding photo with the Cruisin Cone was recently features on The Huffington Post!

The Cruisin' Cone is a family owned and operated business. PJ Burchett is the designer, builder, driver, DJ, and Ice Cream Man of the Cruisin' Cone. Cheryl Burchett handles all the paperwork and scheduling details. She is also a talented artist and art teacher. Cheryl can add face painting or balloon animals to your Cruisin' Cone experience!  PJ and Cheryl will arrive at your event in retro inspired outfits happy to serve and entertain your guests.

The Cruisin Cone will arrive at your event looking like it is ready for a car show and full of classic pre-packaged frozen treats. We typically offer guests a choice of Popsicles, Fudge-cicles, Rocket Pops, Orange Push Up Pops, Brown Cows, Ice Cream Sandwhiches, and Drum Stick Cones.  PJ Burchett will be dressed as the Ice Cream Man to provide a vintage atmosphere and pose for pictures. Classic Rock music can play through two very large speakers on top of the Cruisin Cone and, if your event is after dark, multi-colored lights can further add to the excitement. 

We divide our fee between a truck rental and a treat charge.  Our truck rents for $150 an hour for the first hour and $50 for each additional half hour.  Additionally, we charge $2 per treat for the actual number of treats given out.  For example, if you have The Cruisin Cone at your event for an hour and you have 30 guests, but only 20 get treats you would be charged $150 (truck rental) plus $40 ($2 each for 20 treats) for an event total of $190.  

For the 2018 season, we are adjusting our hours to only do Cruisin Cone events in the evenings Monday through Thursday. We will be available for events anytime (day or evening) on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Interested? Email us at cruisincone@gmail.com to check availability and to get more information

Photos of the Cruisin' Cone

Want to see the latest pictures of the Cruisin Cone?  Check out our Instagram or our Facebook!

Want to get in touch? Email us at cruisincone@gmail.com

SEMA Ignited!

The SEMA Show was four days of amazing awesomeness, but it was only accessible to Industry professionals. So on Friday night, after the show ends, SEMA hosted SEMA ignited.

Several hundred cars from the show are selected to parade from the convention center to the event and The Cruisin Cone was there!

PJ was busy INSIDE the Cruisin Cone, driving and having a great time! Actually, the metro van was FULL of people having a great time. 

I'm really grateful for all the pictures of our ice cream truck that have been popping up on the Internet. 

Here are two that show off the colors and the lights. 

But the whole idea behind SEMA Ignited is seeing these cars MOVE so here are a few that I found. This is a video link to nice all around shot of The Cruisin' Cone lit up at night! And here is an Instagram video of The Cruisin Cone rolling through SEMA Ignited!

Cyber Stalking the Cruisin Cone!

In case you haven't figured it out by now, The Cruisin Cone is a family business. PJ Burchett and his dad Larry Burchett (both of B-Rod or Custom) are the design and build team. I'm PJ's wife and, while he's off in Las Vegas, I'm at home cyber stalking The Cruisin Cone to add content to this blog and the Instagram account (@cruisincone). PJ must be having a great (busy) time because I haven't seen many pictures from him yet. However, the Cruisin Cone is popping up all over the Internet!

Gauge Magazine was one of the first to show off the Cruisin Cone. 

It's a lot of fun scrolling through random SEMA pictures and finding The Cruisin Cone!

In fact, by Thursday evening, if you searched #icecreamtruck on Instagram, a picture of The Cruisin Cone was one of the top posts! 

As the week ends, many websites are posting their SEMA round ups. 

The Cruisin Cone was selected by Top Gear for a post on the "Modified Oddballs of SEMA 2015"!  Here's the link. We are picture number 6. Out of TWELVE! http://www.topgear.com/car-news/concept/gallery-modified-oddballs-sema-2015#1

Eastwood featured it in a SEMA daily wrap up! Check it out at http://www.eastwood.com/blog/eastwood-chatter/cars-of-sema-2015-wednesday-update/

MSN.com featured The Cruisin Cone as one of SEMA's Wildest Wheels! Here's the link. http://www.msn.com/en-ie/cars/enthusiasts/crazy-cars-sema-show’s-wildest-wheels/ss-BBmRmxn

And then, my favorite Cruisin Cone image  so far, is the rendering on the official T-shirts! I'm sure PJ will share info on purchasing a shirt soon.

SEMA Day 1

The Cruisin Cone was all set up for the first day of the SEMA Show and there was a special surprise!

Axalta hired a model and bought a freezer full of ice cream treats to hand out!

Over 400 ice creams were handed out in the first hour!

That's a LOT of foot traffic AND a lot of satisfied customers!

Painting the Cruisin' Cone

The Cruisin Cone is currently being featured in the Axalta Coating Systems display at the 2015 SEMA show in Las Vegas.  The paint is definitely the one element of this project that made the whole thing come alive.  While the paint has only been complete for a short time, PJ has been planning for the paint for a long time. 

At one time, the ice cream truck was going to have a retro tiki vibe with the idea of selling shaved ice. That moved to just a retro ice cream truck but PJ's early idea had a Mexican blanket vibe. 

PJ's wife insisted that classic red and white stripes were needed. Cheryl also helped design the Cruisin Cone logo. 

Eventually the logo was enlarged and an ice cream cone (with 3 scoops in the colors of a traffic light) was added. Here's the working concept drawing that was created just before SEMA 2014. 

Here's PJ at last year's SEMA show with the brochure about the project, drumming up sponsors. Apparently he was also checking out potential uniforms. Uh, huh. Right!

Here's an early mock up of the final paint design in but done in chalk. 

Fast forward to early autumn 2015. With only a few weeks until SEMA, the body work was FINALLY finished and the Metro Van was ready for paint!

The logo being outlined. 

Taping and painting the initial layers.

Masking and taping the stripes. 

Painting the stripes. 

Hand lettering and pin stripping by Howard Horn (www.pinstripesbyhoward.com) and the Cruisin' Cone was ready for Las Vegas!

Getting Ready for SEMA

So, we were posting quite a bit over the summer and then the push to get the Metro Ban ready for SEMA got SERIOUS!  

Well, for PJ it was serious. The kids managed to have some fun, especially when it was warm and daddy was wet sanding! But daddy was ALWAYS at the shop and everyone was too busy to fool around much with pictures. 

If the kids wanted to see daddy, we went to the shop where he worked his regular job during the day, then worked on the ice cream truck until it was really late. Things were happening, but it was hard to see for a while and the , suddenly, within a very short span of time.....

The PAINT was applied and the ice cream truck came alive! This was only a few days before PJ had to leave for the SEMA Show in Las Vegas. 

Suddenly everyone could see what PJ's vision had been all along!