Mac, don't listen to these people, they know nothing of which they speak! I did a commercial ice machine 14 years ago, will never go without one. Matter of fact, we turned off the ice machine in the fridge at home, never was a fan of the nasty, smelly, cloudy ice the comes out of those things. Nothing like crystal clear, rock hard ice that comes out of a commercial machine! I Have a Manitowoc SY0304A, have it sitting on a 400 pound bin... it's been a rock solid machine. While very true, you can buy a ton of ice for what a decent ice machine and bin cost, it's got nothing to do with saving money. I'm guessing, if you factor in the initial cost combined with operating and possible repair cost over the life of the machine, I don't think you'll ever come close to breaking even much less saving any money. But the convenience and ice quality, without a doubt, makes it all worth it, to me anyway. It was always such a pain in the ass, prepping for trips, flogging all day loading motorhomes, trailers, then the last thing you have to do is load up coolers. Gotta run over to the store to pick up 25 bags of ice (half way through the trip, have to go into town for ice), haul ass to get it home while it's turning to water, like I said, just a pain in the ass.
We bring a ton of ice with us on trips, load up one 144 quart cooler with just ice, two smaller soft coolers we use in the cars, then have two smaller 50-ish quart coolers, one with beers, one with sodas. Also line two bins in the fridge freezer with clean trash bags, load them up with ice. We always have ice filled coolers on every ride, drinks with ice in them at camp, after 10 days in the dunes, always come home with leftover ice. Plus, I don't wait to the last minute to load up ice chests... I'll do that early on, at my convenience. That way, everything gets cooled down, then before we hit the road, I drain the ice water out of the coolers and top them off with ice.
I went with Manitowoc at the recommendation of a buddy of mine who is a HVAC guy with some ice machine experience as well as local ice machine repair business.
