Anyone into this? Looked into it and decided against it? Planning to buy machines? I think it’s a great idea and I’m starting to look into it. $36k for a “turn key” setup from Ice Depot which is a touch more than I anticipated but I believe it could still become a nice income stream.

Only if located in an area with very high demand,  beach boat launch that kinda thing.  You will need VOLUME.

With every convience store, Walmart, and grocery store selling bagged ice already, it would be a tough market.

They put one in at the end of my street, next to a 7-11 and a liquor store. 20lb bag for $1.75 iirc. 7-11 is now a laumdrymat, and the liquor store doesn't even bother to sell ice any more.

Location, location, location...................

The one close to my parents in Upstate SC kills it. I’ve wanted to buy a few since that one went in. There aren’t any around me in Alabama.  Location is key for sure but another great thing is these things are portable within reason.

Every store sells everything, but someone always makes it work.

I thought about one but refrigeration isn't cheap to fix.  Ice is expensive to make.  Seems like a hassle. I may be wrong.

A friend of mine told me in West Virginia they have them set up to vend deer corn for your feeders. Take that with a grain of salt, he is from West Virginia after all.

A friend of mine owns 3 or 4 locally. He bought into
a franchise but ran at odds with the parent company,
and bought the machines outright ($$$!). He does
heating and air as his profession, so he does all or
most of the repairs & maintenance himself. I think
that would be a huge expense to farm out when
repairs are needed.

He makes it work as a hands off'ish side income.

That's kind of the way i saw it.  If i need to do repairs to make it work,  I'll just do repairs for other people and have no risk.  I can charge 100 an hour doing refrigeration.

This is something I've had occasional interest in.  I'm subscribing.

OP, I know of a Kooler Ice machine in the Birmingham area for sale. Needs a little work but the guy only wants 12K and its in pretty good shape.

I knew a guy who bought one years ago, then had five with one on a trailer(for events).
location is key.

We have 3 in our town and they seem to do well. Anytime there is a run on ice (Hurricane, corona virus, holidays) they are lined up. Thought about it too but again maintenance seemed like something I’d end up paying out the ass for.

We also like the West Virginia guy have a deer corn feeder machine much like the ice ones. I guess you could fill the bed of your pick up truck up with it. I’ve never used it though.

We have one north and south of town. There is always someone getting ICE. I looked into maybe buying one, but the maintenance on one is daunting. Also if the water source is poor you have to filter the water.

Edit: have you guys seen the deer corn vending machines?

Family owned an ice company for 35 years, I worked there about 20 off and on.   Cost for us were roughly 35% production 25% labor 40% transport.  The smaller the ice machine the less reliable it is and our machines would make enough ice to fill an average size house in 8hrs.  They were moderately unreliable and we had high quality equipment.  We were happy to make a nickel a bag, ecstatic to make a dime.  You have to do volume.   Yes you have lower overhead getting rid of transport and your labor you will call free but production will be very costly and you must have an excellent location not just a good one.  We thought long and hard about buying a few but the numbers just never worked out.  We couldn’t find a location that would consistently do the volume needed to turn a profit.  Remember 1/2 the year nobody will use it no matter what you do.   We know 2 people that own them.  3 machines all different.  They all seem to do about the same.  The bag less has refrigeration problems and the 2 bagged have bagger problems.