By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
DEC. 30, 2025 | In many cities around the country, there once were local operations known as “ice and coal” companies. While the juxtaposition may sound awkward, there was a reason for this name: the weather.
These companies manufactured and sold ice throughout the year, though the summer months were monumental in sales. But with the sale of ice tailing off in the winter, often to restaurants, these firms turned to selling coal for heating homes and businesses in the winter.
When growing up, I distinctly remember the Macon Ice and Coal Company, which was located beside the Ocmulgee River at the Fifth Street Bridge.
The ice was manufactured there in huge blocks, and it was distributed to homes and businesses throughout the city. There were “ice routes,” where most homes had standing orders for the delivery to their kitchens which then had no refrigerator, but “ice boxes,” partially insulated wooden units where the ice kept the food cooler, especially during the summer months, but year-around, too.
The ice was placed in a metal lined box(with door) at the top left. This compartment had a small hole for the melting ice to drip into a pan below. You had to periodically empty that pan, or else you had water on the floor from the pan overflowing.
On the right side of this box was where milk, meat and other groceries were kept cool.
These ice men, armed with ice picks, would come by (if I remember right) twice a week. They would chop off the size of the block you ordered (ten or 15 cent block, depending on the size of your ice box), and deliver to your ice box, even if you were not home. That was back when people didn’t routinely lock their doors.
The ice route was their major summer job, but also extended into the winter, on a reduced basis. But during winter, the Ice Man would load trucks with coal, and deliver this heating fuel to homes and businesses.
Homes in those days had coal chutes, where the coal was shoveled into what was usually the basement or other coal storage areas. It was hard work, as people routinely called the coal company for another delivery when their coal ran low. The homeowner would shovel coal into large buckets to fill the stoves or fireplaces with the coal to heat the houses. It was labor intensive, from delivery to use. Today’s modern “no touch” heating systems would seem a marvel to people used to coal in olden times.
Another vignette I remember about the ice house. My mother belonged to a country Primitive Baptist church about 35 miles from Macon, and this church met on the fourth Sunday of the month. (My mother attended other Primitive Baptist churches the other Sundays.)
When there were meetings with periodic “dinner on the grounds,” my father, who was not a member of a church, would routinely voluntarily stop by the ice plant for a block of ice, which was loaded into a wash tub in the trunk of the car. This would provide coolness for the tea, lemonade or water at the always loaded-down outdoor food tables at dinner. On hot summer days, that was mighty refreshing.
Ice and coal companies and dinners-on-the-grounds: remembering times past.
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