These Are the U.S. Cities Where McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines Break Down the Most
I've been a mom long enough to know better than to make promises involving a McDonald's McFlurry. But every so often I get reckless. I'll tell my kids we can stop for one after swim or dance practice, only to pull into the drive-thru with them tired and bickering in the backseat and hear the words I should have planned for all along: "The ice cream machine is down." At that point, I have no one to blame but myself. I knew the risks when I made the promise.
McDonald's ice cream machines have been disappointing soft serve seekers for so long that their tendency to break down has inspired years of memes, spawned websites devoted entirely to tracking whether they're working, and somehow even gotten the federal government involved . That's an extraordinary amount of lore for a soft serve machine.
So when I came across a new analysis that tracked the status of McDonald's ice cream machines in U.S. cities over nearly six years, I was delighted to discover that someone finally had the hard numbers to respond to fast food's most enduring joke. And the machines' reputation isn't entirely deserved: Nationally, they're down about 10.4% of the time. Depending on where you live, however, the McFlurry situation can be considerably more precarious. In one U.S. city, ordering one is very nearly a coin toss.
Where are McDonald's ice cream machines most likely to be broken?
The Action Network tracked publicly reported status updates on McDonald's soft-serve machines from October 2020 through July 2026, using about 1,839 daily snapshots and 7.86 million individual location checks. Researchers calculated how often machines in each city were reported working or down, with an adjustment to keep a short streak of bad luck from disproportionately affecting smaller cities. To qualify for the rankings, a city needed at least five tracked McDonald's locations and 30 days' worth of data.
The toughest place in America to satisfy a McFlurry craving, it turns out, is Cleveland, Tennessee.
Cleveland landed at the top of the list, with an implied 46.9% probability of encountering a down machine. Apparently, in Cleveland, your McFlurry order comes with a side of suspense.
The five cities where McDonald's ice cream machines are most likely to be down are:
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Cleveland, Tennessee: 46.9%
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Albany, Georgia: 42.4%
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Gulfport, Mississippi: 39.7%
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Kalamazoo, Michigan: 38.6%
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Puyallup, Washington: 37.6%
Odds are considerably sweeter in Ashland, Kentucky, where the implied probability of a down machine was just 2.1%. Yakima, Washington, and Germantown, Maryland, tied at 2.8%, followed by Costa Mesa, California, at 3% and Fairfield, California, at 3.2%. These seem to be the cities in America where you can promise your children a Peanut Butter Crunch McFlurry with something approaching confidence.
The state-level rankings showed a sizeable difference too. Mississippi had the highest probability of a machine being down at 34%, while Minnesota came in as the most reliable state at 11.5%. The Action Network also created a searchable tool covering the 492 eligible cities, so you can check the odds in your own city before your next soft-serve run.
Why are McDonald's ice cream machines always broken?
Here's the interesting part: They aren't—at least not nearly as often as their reputation might suggest. The study found that McDonald's ice cream machines nationwide were reported down about 10.4% of the time, meaning they were working nearly 90% of the time. It makes sense that the other 10% gets most of the attention, though. Nobody gets worked up about the completely uneventful afternoon when they ordered a McFlurry and actually received one.
There are some legitimate reasons for the machines' reputation. Many McDonald's restaurants use Taylor soft serve machines, which have automated cleaning cycles and can be difficult to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. Historically, digital locks also restricted access to some diagnostic information, making repairs more complicated than you might expect for a machine that makes such a simple drive-thru dessert.
In fact, the issue became significant enough to enter the larger right-to-repair debate. In 2024, after the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice weighed in, the U.S. Copyright Office granted an exemption allowing digital locks on certain commercial food equipment to be bypassed when necessary for diagnosis, maintenance or repair.
It's an unexpectedly complicated history for the machine behind a simple sundae , but the good news is that the numbers themselves are reassuring. In most of the country, your odds of successfully getting the treat you ordered are quite good. If you happen to live in Cleveland, Tennessee, however, perhaps wait until the cup is physically in your hand before telling the kids.
