During the 1830s and 1840s the ice trade expanded further, with shipments reaching England, India, South America, China and Australia. Over the coming years the trade widened to Cuba and Southern United States, with other merchants joining Tudor in harvesting and shipping ice from New England. Tudor shipped ice to the Caribbean island of Martinique, hoping to sell it to wealthy members of the European elite there, using an ice house he had built specially for the purpose.

The trade was started by the New England businessman Frederic Tudor in 1806. It only flourished in the time between the development of reliable transportation and the development of widespread mechanical refrigeration. meat, vegetable and fruit industries, enabled significant growth in the fishing industry, and encouraged the introduction of a range of new drinks and foods. Networks of ice wagons were typically used to distribute the product to the final domestic and smaller commercial customers. Ice was cut from the surface of ponds and streams, then stored in ice houses, before being sent on by ship, barge or railroad to its final destination around the world. The ice trade, also known as the frozen water trade, was a 19th-century and early-20th-century industry, centering on the east coast of the United States and Norway, involving the large-scale harvesting, transport and sale of natural ice, and later the making and sale of artificial ice, for domestic consumption and commercial purposes. The ice trade around New York City from top: ice houses on the Hudson River ice barges being towed to New York barges being unloaded ocean steamship being supplied ice being weighed small customers being sold ice the ' uptown trade' to wealthier customers an ice cellar being filled by F.

Ice driver 1890