chest freezer in pick up bed questions

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Anybody see any problems with a plan wife and sister in law dreamed up?

Bring along a household chest type freezer in pick-up bed that's filled with a 1/2 steer to a family member in Virginia and we're on west coast. I read that freezers can keep stuff frozen 24 to 48 hours if you don't open the lid when there is no power. We're planning on most campsites to have full hook ups or running small Honda generator 2 or 3 times a day to make sure it stays frozen.

Planning on 6 days to get there. Seems to easy, other than getting freezer into pick-up.

But I think I must be missing something, just seems to easy.

See anything I'm missing?

Thanks

[belfert]

I bought a chest freezer several years ago specifically for hauling in an enclosed trailer behind my motorhome. I have an outlet at the back of the motorhome just for the freezer. There is a cord that runs from the trailer along the tongue and connects to the outlet at the back of the motorhome. The outlet is set up so water can't get to it and it won't pull out.

I only paid $50 for the 15 CF freezer. It has more than paid for itself in savings on ice for coolers. I boondock for long periods and carry more food than will fit in fridge.

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Dakota98 wrote:
Quote:


Planning on 6 days to get there. Seems to easy, other than getting freezer into pick-up.

How's your payload capacity looking ?

Thanks, I better double check.

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tatest wrote:


I can't imagine that a 1/2 steer is worth enough more in Virginia vs Washington to haul it across the country using $1000 worth of fuel. Double that, you have to drive back. The fuel costs alone would buy a whole steer: cut, dressed, and frozen.

OP here....

Your putting it nicely...We were going to visit anyways. Bringing along a freezer started innocent enough. Gee, it would be great if you could bring some "grass feed" beef off the farm type thing. One good thing is the freezer will also stay at sister in laws.

Thanks posters...Many good ideas I didn't think of.

[SkiingSixPack]

Just fill the empty spaces with frozen gallon milk jugs (washed out and 75% full of tap water). A full freezer and no opening of the lid, is the way to go. With 4 teenagers, I don't need to do this any longer, but I used to...Our freezer is full of food ..... 🙂

This is from thesimpledollar.com

"Fill your empty milk or juice jugs with water, then stick ‘em in the freezer.
A freezer, whether it’s a deep freezer or a freezer housed in the same appliance as a refrigerator, functions best when it’s really full, as the cold items help keep other items cold and maintain the low temperature.

But how can you keep it full without stocking it with a bunch of food that you may or may not eat? If you’re not into filling your freezer with food, fill it with water.

It’s simple. Take an empty milk jug (or juice jug), rinse it out, then fill it about 75% full with tap water. Stick that jug in the freezer and just leave it there. It’ll freeze, then it will help keep the temperature of your freezer low over the long haul, causing your freezer to kick on a bit less often to keep your items cool.

Even better, you can directly use these jugs when you need a lot of ice. You can either stick the jug entirely in a cooler or smash it open and use the broken ice pieces to your desire. Works like a charm – we do it all the time!"

[StewB]

see it all the time here in BC. People heading home from the coast with a freezer full of salmon and ground fish. Freezer in the back of a pickup and a small honda running beside it.

[john_bet]

We did that in June of '78 when we moved from ILL. to S.D. except the freezer was in a U-Haul trailer. We camped with tents and sleeping bags way back then. Plugged freezer in at night. All was well when we got there. Freezer was pretty much full. In fact the freezer is still going strong to this date. Bought new in '73. Go for it.

[Dakota98]

Quote:


Planning on 6 days to get there. Seems to easy, other than getting freezer into pick-up.

How's your payload capacity looking ?

[tatest]

This time of year, with summer sun heat loads across the Great Plains? I would figure on packing the free space in the freezer with dry ice and maybe buying more along the way (most supermarkets have the stuff in this part of the world).

I can't imagine that a 1/2 steer is worth enough more in Virginia vs Washington to haul it across the country using $1000 worth of fuel. Double that, you have to drive back. The fuel costs alone would buy a whole steer: cut, dressed, and frozen.

[Grit_dog]

Yep it works. Pretty much only seen it done in AK though. Seems like a pain in the @ss to haul a half a beef coast to coast though.

[pigman1]

We fish in Alaska and have a 17 cu ft chest freezer we fill completely. Once loaded into the pickup bed (with a large cap) we have an extension that runs from the bed to a 110v plug at the radiator. Another extension from the RV to the pickup allows us to run the RV inverter and power the freezer. While running, the solar array and the RV engine generator provide all power I need. We boondock all the way home starting out with occasional snow showers in Alaska and 90+ degrees along the US Canadian border, down Michigan and across Ohio, PA and West Virginia to Delaware. We hardly ever run the RV generator and the freezer stays at zero degrees.

[pitch]

Couple of times per year an itinerate meat salesman pulls up into the drive. Has a chest freezer and a Honda running in the back of his truck. Every year I take his picture and run him off, but he pops up again several months later.
Must work for him, he has been doing this for years.

[DrewE]

Seems like a practical plan to me. It would help to maintain the temperature to more or less fill the excess room in the freezer with bags or blocks of ice or something to add more thermal mass. That does unfortunately mean more weight in the truck.

I would suggest waiting several hours after loading the freezer into the truck before running it if you have to tilt it significantly to get it in. You'd also need to have some sort of positive latch or other closure to keep the lid shut while en route—most chest freezers I've seen rely mainly on gravitation to keep the lid closed. A hasp or strap or even a double hung window lock should do the trick nicely.

[amandasgramma]

We fish on the Snake River......a lot of people bring the small ones over to keep the fish in until they go home. 🙂 Seems to work fine. If your truck can hold a heavy freezer and 1/2 beef, then go for it!!!!! Just get a thermometer that can be read without opening the doors.......to keep an eye on the temps.

[Trackrig]

It will work. We used to do something like that when going to Chitna to dip for salmon. If we were going to be there for a week (sometimes the salmon run was spotty) we'd take a chest freezer and generator. We'd clean the fish each night, wrap and freeze them. That way we didn't have to rush home and there was nothing left to do but divide up the salmon when we got there.

If we were only going to be there for a couple of days, we'd fill the back of one of the trucks up with ice. After you turned off of the Richardson Hwy onto the road to Chitna, there was a campground with a large (10' diameter) culvert under the road. It would still be half full of ice from the winter. We'd load up a truck, put the salmon in the ice and cover them with a couple layers of tarps. Worked fine for three to four days.

Bill