I'm moving back to florida and plan on taking a u haul truck with all my stuff. The drive will take 4 days with no refrigeration. I have a 14.7 cubic foot freezer and a 7 cubic foot freezer. Both freezers are 60 to 70 percent full of frozen packaged game meat. If I buy a bunch of dry ice and fill up both freezers with it would it make the trip OK. I'll be leaving in a month or so. The Temps in new mexico should be cool but as I get closer to florida the Temps will increase of course. Any tips would be great.

I moved from NM to Nashville in August with a freezer full of meat.
Plugged it in to power at a KOA at nigh. Three days enroute and all was fine.
Dry ice will likely carry you pretty well.
Dry ice suppliers I have ever use gave good advice to make it last and provide effective cooling.

Generator to power the freezers works too.

Start now, unplug them and pack them with dry ice, then watch to see how long the dry ice lasts.
You can buy more en route also, plan the places to buy ahead of time.
I do this on the way back from Wyoming or Montana.

You won't need to "fill them up" with dry ice. A couple of blocks(6# each?) will be enough for a large freezer. IME a block will last a couple of days, so you will have to refill once along the way.

An extension cord to run the freezer at night will also work. You can usually find a place to plug them in overnight where ever you stay.

A small generator will work. We use a Honda 2000 and one or two freezers when bringing game back from Alaska or Canada. Never a problem and they use very little gas. Can also plug into an outlet at night if available.

get a long extension card and plug it in every night or so..It will stay frozen for several days without being hooked up..

I have a 5.5 smaller freezer that fits in the back of my pickup that I take hunting all over the USA, and haul the meat back, with not a single problem..That little freezer costs $150, less tham a foam box of any make that cost $400..My freezer will hold 4 or 5 deer quartered. Two men can lift it easy empty and I have loaded by myself empty..I have a 100 ft. extension and plug it in at my motel rooms or at camp whatever....

I've seen people hunting oryx at white sands that used the freezer/generator and they claimed great success. I was headed back to Farmington (4 hours or so) so just put a tarp in the bed of the pickup and packed the chest cavity and sides with ice. But I can think of no reason the generator/freezer set up wouldn't work fine.

I used to use a kiddie pool in the back of my pickup put th quarters in it and cover them with about a dozen ice bag and a tarp..worked good.

But my best yet is a small deep freeze ($150 at Lowes) and a 100 ft. cord..Can go 5 or 6 days without power then needs a charge plug in at the motel or wherever...Or packaged meat, depending on the circumstances.

All I would add is you should consider buying a cheap indoor/outdoor thermometer with the long wire probe. This way you can seal the probe inside the freezer and avoid having to open it just to check your meat.

You will probably benefit by wrapping the freezer in several blankets unless the device is running.

It will take at least 2 full days for the dry ice to get the freezer temp down to where the dry ice will last. I usually purchase 25 Lb block cut into 4 pieces. Once the freezer temp has dropped to dry ice temp, a nominal amount (15 Lbs) of dry ice will hold up for about 3 days.
The first two days you are taking the freezer temp from 0 to minus 100, That's where you use up most of the dry ice. Once that low, the dry ice only needs to compensate for heat gain through the freezer walls which will be small.

A deep cycle 12V RV/marine-type battery with an inverter from Harbor Freight (or wherever) will run a freezer for many hours as you travel merrily down the road. Then plug it in wherever you stop at night, as well as recharge the battery overnight. It is silent, and unlike many generators which will shut themselves off if bounced on a trailer, the battery/inverter goes steadily until the battery is drained. Actually, if you start off with the freezer down to 0F or so it will take very little run time through the day to keep it plenty cold.

I've transported elk & deer quarters from Colorado to Texas for many years this way in a freezer I bought for a hundred bucks at a garage sale. By the way, the freezer makes a much better "ice chest" even when it is not running than those multi-hundred $$$ tiny boxes with the prestige brand names.

Any of the above would work.

Simple may be best, less costly, low maintenance.

As mentioned above by TCLouis- "Dry ice suppliers I have ever use gave good advice to make it last and provide effective cooling" sounds like a fine plan, possibly duct tape to seal & prevent the vapor from escaping.

Trust me. you want the vapors to escape.

We take a chest cooler on our way to Wyoming from Michigan. We fill it with beer, pop and water.It is a small lightweight chest freezer. We plug it in for 12 to 15 hours before we leave. Nothing freezes but is cold when we get there. We plug it in for our butchered animals to freeze. On our way home if we stop at a motel we just plug it in. We just leave it in the back of the truck and never buy dry ice, since it is only a 27 hour drive.

Ok. I'll trust you. Please elaborate. Expansion?

quote:

Originally posted by TCLouis:
Trust me. you want the vapors to escape.

If we use dry ice should I vent the freezer to make sure the pressure does not build up to much every now again?

quote:

Originally posted by steel:
If we use dry ice should I vent the freezer to make sure the pressure does not build up to much every now again?

Not necessary. Freezers are hardly pressure-sealed. Anything above normal atmospheric pressure will escape around the door seal, but all freezers have a drain hole in the bottom which would prevent abnormal pressure from building in the first place. Dry ice is simply frozen carbon dioxide -- the inert gas used in fire extinguishers. Its vapor is harmless (except in global quantities in the atmosphere which create a greenhouse effect that traps heat nearer the Earth's surface.)

You wont find dry ice in Mexico for sure..and its even hard to find and time consuming in the USA while traveling or can be at times anyway..Go buy a $150 freezer and a 110 ft. of extension card and be done with it..

So we hooked up a 2000 watt inverter to the battery and two extention cords to the back of the truck to the freezers. Unfortunately the inverter started to smell like something was burning and a warning light came on. We shut down the inverter and found some dry ice in Oklahoma and bought 20 pounds and put it in both coolers. The meat was still frozen solid for the first 24 hours so I'm hoping the dry ice will get us through the rest of the trip.

Just a quick update. The 20 pounds of dry ice kept the meat frozen solid all the way to florida. thanks for all the input.

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
You wont find dry ice in Mexico for sure..and its even hard to find and time consuming in the USA while traveling or can be at times anyway..Go buy a $150 freezer and a 110 ft. of extension card and be done with it..

Smith's in Utah, Stater Brothers in CA, not sure about Nevada because I usually drive straight through unless I need fuel.