Frostbite Ice to expand to serve increased demand

By BEN KLEINE

Staff writer

On the hottest days of summer, workers at Frostbite Ice Company of Marion only have to open up a cooler to experience sweet relief.

“Whenever you step in and unload it always cools you down,” employee Isaac Hett said.

Hett is one of four high school aged summer time helpers for Frostbite Ice owned by Merle Flaming and operated behind Flaming’s Heating and Cooling. Memorial Day to Labor Day is the company’s peak period.

During the other seasons, Frostbite will unload and deliver 12,000 pounds of ice every four days with a delivery every day; the two full-time delivery drivers and overseer Terry Bruton, who works part time, can handle the operation themselves. For the hot and humid summer months, production increases to 12,000 pounds a day and a little extra help is necessary.

“Plus,” Bruton said, “with 12,000 pounds plus, we don’t let people run out.”

Frostbite Ice Company has been in business in Marion for five years. The company uses two ice machines that can produce 10,000 pounds of ice a day. The machines charcoal filter Marion city water and then run it through a two different sets of tube freezers. Each case contains 120 tubes that freeze the ice with a hole only a couple centimeters wide. The machine then chops the ice, passes it along a chute, and then puts it into bags.

By 7 a.m. Thursday, the employees were busily working to load trucks with pallets weighing 2,000 pounds each. Soon two trucks had departed to deliver ice to grocery and convenience stores all the way from Caney to the far south and Herington to the north. The company also brings 10 or 20-pound bags of ice to businesses in Wichita, Inman, and Buehler.

But, the big money comes from manufacturers in Newton, McPherson, and Wichita that purchase five pallets at a time.

Frostbite Ice Company has been inundated with orders this summer. Any malfunction in a machine is a sizable decrease in production. One of the two machines on Thursday froze — the coolant water was freezing before it could freeze the ice in the freezing tubes. Whenever a machine breaks down, Bruton and the other workers fix it themselves or acquire the services of a Flaming’s air-conditioning specialist.

Frostbite was in the process of preparing a third ice machine that can produce 20,000 pounds of ice Thursday. Currently, workers bag ice once a day at 7 a.m. With the new machine, planned to be in operation by Monday, Frostbite employees will bag ice twice at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Bruton said that the company would look into possibly adding a third full-time employee and two more summer workers.