Daren Carroll is matter-of-fact, deadpan in a strangely pleasant way, and hilarious, possibly without realizing it. He's awesome.

He got started selling ice cream when he was 16, and his story, he admits dryly, is like something out of a movie.

"I've been doing this for 27 years," said Carroll over the phone from his ice-cream-truck business in Waterbury.

"I got hustled one day on the golf course for a couple thousand dollars and I didn't have the money to pay the guy," he said, sighing. "So he threatened me and he said, 'You show up here tomorrow and we'll deal with it tomorrow.' And when I showed up, an ice cream truck was there and he said, 'Get in.'"

The man took Carroll on an ice cream truck route and made him help him sell ice cream. Then, after a couple of days, the hustler asked Carroll if he thought he knew the route. Carroll said he did, and so he spent the summer working off his debt.

"By the end of the summer, the guy told me, 'You're a good kid. You made good on your debt, you didn't steal from me and if you want, I'll sell you the truck.' And so I bought it from him," said Carroll. Today, Carroll has seven trucks and his own business: Daren's Ice Cream.

Of the few things that haven't made much of a transition to the Web, ice cream trucks seem stuck in time. There's not so much room for ingenuity. Just put some Popsicles in a freezer, get a van with a speaker system and a loopable MIDI track, and chase children. That's as advanced as that system is going to be. And for some, like Anthony Luciani of Rolling Cones in East Norwalk, it's a lucrative business model.

Luciani got his first ice cream truck when he was in high school. Now he's 25 and has six trucks, six drivers and six years' experience under his belt. He's even in the process of building a restaurant.

"What we do is different from what other ice cream drivers do," Luciani told me in a phone interview. "We do more parties and more catering. We advertise as an ice-cream catering company."

Luciani and his drivers are booked almost every day of the week doing "everything and anything," including weddings, birthday parties, festivals and fundraisers.

"We hit as many streets as we can between parties," Luciani said. "But we're pretty much booked. A lot of the other companies out there are just people who own an ice cream truck and more just drive around and do the streets."

Carroll, who says he spends every day on the streets, sometimes nine-hour days, sometimes 12-hour days, said his business isn't doing so well.

"Business is slow," he said. "Very slow. Because of competition. In Bristol there's like eight trucks. In Hartford there's like 15. In Waterbury there's like 10. Plus there's corner stores, bodegas. Twenty-five years ago there weren't so many convenience stores." If a kid can walk to the corner and buy some ice cream, why would he wait around for a truck?

There's also a lot more regulation at beaches and parks. Vendors bid, usually annually, at city and town halls for rights to certain real estate, granted to the highest bidder. So coveted summer selling spots, like Hop Brook in Naugatuck (which went this year for about $4,000, Carroll estimates), only permit one vendor at a time, and some parks and beaches only renew bidding every three or five years. That leaves ice cream men like Carroll cruising the Waterbury projects at 10 at night trying to sell Spongebob Squarepants Popsicles to anyone who won't rob him. And people rob him all the time, he said.

"The biggest trouble I have is thieves. Someone'll grab the ice cream and say, 'I don't feel like paying.' What am I supposed to do? Get out of the truck? I say, 'Thanks a lot for ripping me off. Have a nice day.' You can't do nothing about it," he said. "It happens all the time. All the time."

Kenny Allen is the sales coordinator at Vending Trucks, a company based in New Jersey that makes and sells custom vending trucks. He says the phone is ringing off the hook for trucks, but only a very small percentage of those calls lead to any sales.

"Because of the way the credit crunch is, I have plenty of people who want to get into business but no one has the experience or the startup capital," Allen said. "People are losing their jobs and they have a little money, but it's not enough."

People calling for these trucks tell Allen they've dreamed their whole lives of operating a taco truck or an ice cream truck or a sausage and cheesesteak truck.

"The nice thing about [trucks] is you don't have to deal with the square-footage of the kitchen or the equipment," Allen said. All the trucks come fully loaded, ready-to-go, etc.

But, unfortunately, it's harder to get people going.

"Leasing companies are out of control," he said. "And banks aren't lending money and people aren't able to come up with loans. It didn't used to be like this."

Luciani told me he also gets a ton of calls from people every day looking for jobs.

"It's out of control the number of calls I get a day. Anywhere from five to 10 a day, every day for the past month," he said. "I've never gotten this many calls before."

Carroll himself works almost every day, from February to November.

"You think little Sally cares if it's cold outside? She wants ice cream. If she's got two bucks in her pocket and I show up, she's gonna get some ice cream. The only reason I don't go out every day is I know I'm a pain in the ass. Parents are like, 'You've bled me dry for seven months. Give me a break,'" he said.

Carroll said his favorite ice cream is the coconut fruit bar. "I like that one," he said. I told him I, too, enjoy a coconut fruit bar from time to time.

"I can tell you've visited the ice cream truck," he deadpanned. "You know what I'm talking about."