Wife is going to take a cooler of salmon and caribou out to MT when she gets back from Spain and thence our remote cabin week(we got it covered alternatively frozen for a week in Fairbanks) That $26 dollar cooler from Fred Meyer, purchased 9 years ago and doing yeoman's duty to the Bush for 8 years, is on a one way trip...
Well, maybe not - we do drive out...... if they save it...
i own a Yeti cooler yes these coolers are heavy and expensive but ice and frozen food do stay cold alot longer in a Yeti for me.i am glad i own one because when i am bowhunting in the mountains at least at base camp i still have some meat staying cold for up to 10 days as long as my Yeti cooler is in the shade with temps of 70 degrees during the day.
I interviewed with them in 2015 for a product development engineering manager position when my wife was in Austin and I was considering moving there. Figured why not switch industries while I was at it, go from medical device engineering - plates, screws, taylor spatial frame, etc. to outdoor stuff. Hell, the recently hired CEO to the company has the same background as me! The recruiter - from a 3rd party head hunter service - totally blew me off as not having any “outdoor brand experience” or some [bleep] like that. Only time in my life that an interview ended with the equivalent of “well [bleep] you too!”. It was surprisingly irritating and refreshing in the same day.
And Hell No, i won’t buy and Yeti [bleep]. RTIC all the way for me
And therein lies the problem with 3rd party headhunters having yeah-neah control over a qualified candidate. I can't tell you how many deadbeats I got stuck working with in high level IT mgmt positions because of this exact scenario. They pick their exact schmoozer images with little concern or knowledge about the.professional requirements of the position.
Slaves get what they need. Free men get what they want.
Ive got a Yeti 65 , bought it about 7 years ago before the NRA crap came out and everyone copied them. No complaints, it has literally been on the back of my Tacoma the entire time. Other than fading out a little it looks just like when I bought it. Holds ice great, tough as hell . What more could you want.
Don't bother with the "Roadie" sized cooler. It barely holds a 6-pack and a 10# bag of ice and if it does, it's too blooming awkward and heavy to carry with the fold over handle. Go the next size up with the two rope handles.
Yeti coolers are referred to as "Redneck Rolexes". Nobody really needs one, but it allows you to show everyone you have money to blow.
You can watch a youtube vid comparing a yeti to a cheap igloo. the yeti actually won by a few hours over numerous days. If ice was $30 a bag I might consider a cooler that will hold it a small amt of time longer... I can buy a LOT of ice for what I save not owning a yeti.
"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went" Will Rogers
I have 2. While they were cheaper, there is a reason. They are cheaply made. The material used is not a hard plastic but a much softer plastic. There is a great deal of flex in the lids and quality control seems to be lacking. One of the gaskets broke the first time i used the cooler. I think I paid $99 each for the 50 qt. They work well, but they are no where near an Arctic or Yeti as far as toughness. Ice retention is good, but if I were to do it all over, I would get either the Arctic or the Ozark brands. Yeti's are way over priced.
JMO
Clyde
The liberal mind is an endless black hole of stupidity.
I have 2. While they were cheaper, there is a reason. They are cheaply made. The material used is not a hard plastic but a much softer plastic. There is a great deal of flex in the lids and quality control seems to be lacking. One of the gaskets broke the first time i used the cooler. I think I paid $99 each for the 50 qt. They work well, but they are no where near an Arctic or Yeti as far as toughness. Ice retention is good, but if I were to do it all over, I would get either the Arctic or the Ozark brands. Yeti's are way over priced.
JMO
Clyde
My brother was filling up his work truck at a mobil station in Florida. There is a train track about 100 feet from the gas station, A guy in a work truck was in a rush to go somewhere and his Cheap Walmart Cooler flew out and landed on the tracks. My brother drove home and saw it laying there, it was full of ice and beer and other then a scuff not a mark on it. It holds ice almost as well as his icy teks(which have no peer) . If that is not tough enough punishment for a cheap cooler I don't know what is.
In currently made coolers a Yeti cannot even come close to a Pelican. I have a 75QT one that can probably survive an atomic bomb last
Ive had a yeti 45 for a couple years and its a nice coolers and works fairly well, but i wouldnt go out and buy another. On the other hand, the soft coolers / bags that they make work very well i have several friends that have them and ive been impressed. Id definitely put the money down to buy one.
Have the RTIC 30 soft cooler and it held up for about 2 years but now its literally starting to come apart at the seams, would not recommend.
I have a friend that regularly rafts rivers in the USA and Canada for up to a month at a time. He has about every cooler made. He maintains Orca is the best out there, better than Yeti or Rtic.
“Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There Is Nothing Left to Take Away” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
If you use a cooler a few weekends a year, buy a Igloo or Coleman. If you use it daily a Yeti or one of their competitors will pay for itself. Both in ice savings and service life.