My Wife and son gave me a 45qt Tundra series Yeti cooler for Fathers Day. I am pumped. Hard to imagine getting so excited about a cooler but these things are awesome. Anyone else have any experience with one? I can't wait to try it out this summer and see how long ice lasts in it.

Great present! Everyone I know who owns one raves about how good they are.
Steve W

I have three --- they're great! For best results, precool the cooler, prechill the contents, use block ice vs. cubes (small capacity drinking water bottles, frozen, make great, melt-water free ice...), keep coolers out of direct radiant heat, i.e., keep them in the shade and/or covered --- a space blanket works pretty well to deflect radiation --- and a few pounds of dry ice in the bottom will help hold ice a little longer. I can keep ice for at least four days with ambient daytime temps above 110 degrees, with care. A 45 quart Yeti cooler itself is fairly heavy, real heavy when full, so be smart about about where you fill it --- I usually load my empty 45 qt. on the tailgate, and fill it up there...

Not a whole lot better than the other brands on keeping ice, but they are very durable and haven't had a bear get inside it yet( I don't think there has been a bear in our hunting area in about a 100yrs )

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KMAG YOYO

Yeti's are one of those products that you love getting as a gift but really can't justify buying for yourself. I've come close to pulling the trigger on one several times, but ten I step back and think about the price and say to myself ARE YOU CRAZY??? I know they keep ice for 6-9 days but I'm usualy only on the water for about 8 hours at the longest.
They really are a good product though. Icey tech is back in business (the original "yeti") and if I do pull the trigger, it's gonna be one of these.
Ice Chests - Best Ice Boxes on Earth! Icey-Tek Coolers

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Just don't leave it unattended in a the back of a pickup truck -- it will disappear on you. They do make a lock kit that secures it to side-stake holes n the side of your truck which works really well.

They are NEAR bear proof. Not talking whimpy little blacks either. Saw a neat video of either a Coastal Grizzly or a Kodiak was trying his best to get into one. All he did was dirty it up and scratch it.

GREAT coolers too.

Based on the sticker price, they sure are "proud" of them.

I don't stay out long enough to need the duration these coolers give and for the price I can go through quite a few standard coolers.

OBTW, I still own and use a small 12 drink cooler I got as a gift in 1980! Mine tend to last, even if they aren't "bear proof".

Edmo

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Ask me how I know this............

First outing last year with a 120qt Yeti - topped full of fresh caught halibut filets and a 30pack of beer. Tucked under the suburban and boat with 4 of us sleeping within 15 feet of it at a campsite. Woke up and it was gone.

I will be looking foward to hear how you like it and how it performes against other coolers you have had.

A good coller is a great thing to have. Many, many years ago while on a deep sea fishing trip my wife cought a dolphin.

So I bought one of the large Gott coolers to bring it back home to be "mounted".
Then we started using this Gott Mega Cooler for our regular hunting trips.

It was the best cooler I have ever used. It was HUGE, and would hole a lot of ice and keep it longer than any other cooler I had ever used.

It will holeda butchered out elk, and enough ice to keep in cold even in warm weather for 3 days at least. I liked it so well I bought another.

More reciently say in the last 6 to 7 years I needed a couple of smaller coolers, so I bought a couple of the Igloo MAX Cold coolers.

I have found these coolers to be the best of any of the smaller coolers I have ever used. And I use coolers quire a bit.

I have looked a the Yeti's several times, including just a few days ago, and againn I am curious to see how well they perform, for a "real" person.

They are well made and very strong, but my question is, do they really keep ice longer than my Gott's or my Max Cold's.

Random thoughts on using coolers.

Many of my trips last for several weeks, in the toolies, so keeping food cold for a long time, and keeping ice for Scotch is a top priority.

On these trips I use a combination of block ice and cubed ice.
I keep the cooler in the shade and limit the amount of time I have the door open.
Sometimes I even dedicate one cooler to have nothing but block and cubed ice, that I use to replace the ice in the food cooler.

On shorter trips for food I many times use what is commonly called "Blue Ice. I am sure most all of you know what I am talking about, you freeze it in your freezer at home, and it lasts longer than regular ice, and when it melts it does not put water in the cooler with the food.

In hot weather Blue Ice is good for 3 days or so.
I always use it when going to the deer lease as I have electricity there and when I get there I put my food in the ice box/freezer,and refreeze the blue ice in the freezer.

I usually butcher the deer/pigs/turkey, etc. I kill there and freeze it in vacume sealed bags.

When I come home I pack the meat and the blue ice into the coolers.

Everything is still frozen when I get home.

Gotts are great coolers. Igloos are good for my purposes and since I am hard on ice chests, the price is right. An Igloo will last around 5 years for me. the biggest issue is the size as it has to fit in front of my console on the boat which limits it to 31" long. By the time I size the cooler to fit, with the Yeti I am down to a 65 quart capacity which is just too small. The same size external ly Igloo holds 95 quarts and is long enough for fish. I like at least a 30" inside length to accommodate the fishing I do in my boat and the Igloo fits the bill whereas the Yeti's don't. As far as Ice keeping, I can attest, at least with the old Icey Techs, that they WILL hold ice for a long time. We had a 320 quart of the Hatteras and it was a great fish box until some lowlife stole it off the boat down in Venice. FOr my purposes, if I do get one for the boat it would be a 105Quart cube for the yeti or a 120 quart cube in the icey tech based on the dimensions but that would still be a tight fit for the redfish.

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They are great, my son bought me one for fathers day 2011 or 2010. We keep beer in it out at the lake when we are just hanging out in the water at Rayburn.

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I have one and use it when I go to my cabin in Virginia. They are expensive as coolers go but they work. A top end high dollar cooler is one of those things where you dont spend the money unless you really need it. This causes alot of guys to say things like "I would never pay that much for a cooler!!!" Which causes me to say "when you need one you will know it...and then you'll buy a Yeti"
One tip I have found to be true is to pre-cool the cooler before you load it with food and drinks. If it's in the winter time that could mean just opening it and letting it sit outside for a few hours. In the heat of summer it might mean loading it with a charge of ice the day before and then draining and recharging it right before departure. Another good tip is to use larger blocks of ice...they stay frozen longer than little tiny cubes. I like mine and Yeti is not the only maker of high end coolers that actually work. Bottom line to the guys that blast Yeti's...if you dont need one then dont buy one.

You mean, let it sit outside in the dead of winter, at eighty ambient degrees to pre-cool it? Around here, it means at least bringing it into an airconditioned space, if not using ice as you described...

You know exactly what I mean...just like if I said you wouldn't need a Yeti if you lived in the arctic.

The Yeti also claims to be safe for Dry Ice.

Dry Ice can be very useful if you need to keep frozen food frozen, for several days.


I have used Dry Ice in my Gott's and in my Igloo Max Colds, but I am very careful to wrap the Dry Ice in news paper, and keep it from touching the inside of the cooler.