If you’ve got a truck or a van, you can carry just about anything without too much fuss. Those of us with regular cars, though? Suddenly, when it’s time to haul lumber or shift mulch, we have to get creative. So I ask you—what’s the weirdest load you’ve hauled in a regular car?
I’m not talking folding chairs in the back of a Honda Accord, or a couple of coolers in the trunk of a Camry. I’m talking oddball, offbeat, strange—the kind thing that has the State Trooper pulling you over for a summons and an ear-bashing.
This question was spawned by the erudite Peter Viera, who spotted a great example online. I think we can all agree this was the result of a timber purchase gone duly awry. Who amongst us hasn’t been there?
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When Peter floated this idea, it appealed to me directly. Why? Because I’ve been in this exact situation, except a little stupider. Because I’m a car enthusiast.
See, once upon a time, I had my very own art studio. It was really cool! We were building our own stage, and it was my job to pick up the timber cladding. Surely enough, I popped into Bunnings (Home Depot but green), and laid down the cash for the boards. Only, when I got to the parking lot, I realized my mistake. I’d pulled up in my Miata, and there was no way they’d fit in the trunk.
I was on a deadline, and besides, I’m stubborn. If a job can be done, I’m gonna do it. Sketchiness be damned. I ended up going back inside. I had the boards cut in half, I bought a bunch of string, and I figured out a way to lash everything to the car with the roof down.
It was stupid in the extreme. The biggest problem was the taut strings running back and forth through the cabin, right in front of the driver’s seat. I had to thread myself in beneath the tangle, and I could barely shift for the ropes impeding my arms and legs. It was all a bit Entrapment, though I looked nothing like Catherine Zeta Jones.
It was like this.Â
What made it even sillier was that weeks before, I had a far better car to do the job. I’d used my Volvo 740 Turbo to pick up all the rest of the timber with ease. It even had a tow ball! Sadly, I’d sold it, so my roadster was forced into lumber duty.
Ultimately, I got away with my little gambit. I probably wouldn’t have tried it, but I was only going 3 miles down the road and it seemed like it would work. These days, I’m more reluctant to go for such Rube Goldberg antics.
That’s my silly story. Now it’s time to share yours. I’m disappointed we don’t have pictures in the comments, but I’ll ask nonetheless—what’s the weirdest load you’ve hauled in a regular car? Odder the better.
Image credits: author
I carried a PA system in a (manual, at least) Saturn Ion that consisted of 12″ two-way tops, a 15″ subwoofer (actual plywood boxes much bigger,) mixer, stands, mics, etc. I had to add two 12″ monitor wedges once, too. There was adequate interior volume to tetris it all in there, but the openings were weird-shaped and I had to do some challenging maneuvers to get it all in and out. I definitely got some looks. I also damaged the door cards.
For 10 years I used our old Kia Sedona minivan as a yardwork pickup. Threw away the seats and just stuffed it with tree limbs and yard bags to take to the dump every spring and fall. It was always fun rolling up next to all the jacked up crewcab pickups and dropping a bigger load than they could fit in their 5 foot beds.
Moonshine ‘still in an ’01 V70. I’m from Kentucky and Kentucky things do occasionally happen here. It was a decoration for a rich man’s basement bar.
I should had used my truck but I was already at home depot, I put a bunch of bags from mulch in my Chevy Volt, there is a reason the trend of #fitsinavolt exist. Thanks to the hatch design and putting the seats down, you get an enormous opening for a bunch of things.
Yes my old Volt I fit a self propelled electric mower, leaf blower, and weed wacker I was delivering to family, all fit and hatch closed.
I don’t think I’ve ever packed anything truly odd into a vehicle. I did get to play some Tetris in college when I had to pack most of my stuff into a Mazda3 sedan to go home for Christmas break. This included a tower desktop computer, a large CRT monitor, and my pet gecko in his 20 gallon terrarium. I filled the small trunk with light items like clothes and perishable food. I put the terrarium on the back passenger side seat and slid the front seat all the way back to wedge it in place. On the other side of the back seat I wrapped the desktop in a blanket and buckled it in. The monitor was buckled into the front passenger seat with the glass against the seat back and a pillow on the back to *maybe* save it if it fell out. I did this several times because of Christmas and spring break.
Miatas are underrated cargo haulers. I brought home a 6-foot step ladder with mine, resting on the windshield header and the aftermarket roll bar, held down by a length of rope around the passenger seat base. Luckily I didn’t have to go far, or fast…
I once carried a 15′ Queen Palm home from the nursery in my 67 MGB for my mom. The root ball fit perfect into the passenger seat. My mom has and old picture of it in some family album tucked away in some cedar chest somewhere somewhere.
A 16 foot Old Town canoe atop a 13 foot New Beetle TDI…while it won’t meet the weirdness prompt, it sure did look funny!
Some context, I come from a big family; I’m the second of ten kids. 5 years ago when I was 18, my parents asked me to go pick up some frozen chickens from a farmer. How many chickens? 5? 10? No, try 60. I packed my little 2019 Honda Fit Sport with 5 full-sized ice chests and took off on an 8-hour round-trip through Northern Nevada. Good times. That poor little Fit didn’t love accelerating or braking under that load.
It’s 1986, and I’m working for an engineer who runs the business out of his house. One day he decides the best use of my time is to go pick up sod so his kid can lay it around the yard that weekend.
For this task, he gives me his 1977 Pontiac Sunfire/Starfire/Astre whatever Chevy Monza clone. With Iron Puke engine.
After loading the sod order into the hatch, the rear shocks and springs gave up the ghost and the rear bumper was about an inch off the pavement. The load probably weighed close to half a ton, so the already-pathetic Iron Puke couldn’t even get the car up to 30. Even at such low speeds, I think I lost one sod bundle on the way back.
I don’t think the car was ever used after that, he had to junk it.
There are entire Reddit threads and Facebook groups dedicated to carrying weird things in Miatas. You should look them up.
I can’t say I’ve ever done anything that crazy myself (I probably have, I just can’t remember), but when I gave away an old couch, the people that took it arrived in a 90s era Ford Taurus. I told them I’d help them get it out of the house and onto the curb, but they were on their own from there. I’ve got a great picture of them trying to strap a full size couch to the top of that car. They drove away with it. What happened after that I don’t really want to know.
In the mid-’90s, I was working for a small company that designed and sold custom displays. They were located in a very rural area and would hire local shops as fabricators. One welder was building hundreds of 6′ tall frames for a display designed for a luxury candy brand alongside his standard production line of industrial fan parts.
One time, while in my 1987 Subaru GL 4WD wagon, I had to run to a particularly rustic shop (his main business was welding broken farm implements with a specialization in manure spreaders) to review the work on a crazy holiday display for either Saks. It was a 12-foot-tall by 5′ 5-foot-wide pear tree made of rolled steel rod. It did break down into a few flat-ish sections.
We were on a deadline, and it needed to get to the powder coater who was about 60 miles away. The welder didn’t have the time to drive it, so he helped me strap it to the Yakima roof rack on top of the Subaru, and off I went. It was 90 minutes on back country roads driving through tiny little towns with a massive metal tree on the roof of my old Japanese wagon. It was a surprisingly uneventful trip
My wife and I bought a mid-century hutch at a flea market down the hill from us. We didn’t measure it because EVEYTHING’LL fit in a minivan, right?
Yeah, no.
Luckily both my brothers were in from out of town, and the three of us were able to hork it onto the top of the van and strap it down VERY precariously. I didn’t break 10 on the way home, but it was up a STEEP hill. I aged about 5 years that day…
My oldest brother had shirts made to commemorate the occation…
There was some PVC pipe that we threaded from the trunk of a sedan with the pass-through open along the passenger side, and then out the front passenger window. The person in the front passenger seat had to get in before loading was complete so we could do it and then they had to wait for them to be unloaded before opening their door.
There was also the stack of about 5 kayaks thrown in the back of my Jetta wagon (whitewater so relatively short compared to sea kayaks but still long enough to prevent the rear door from closing) along with a similar number strapped to the roof rack. That was to help the kayak club move them across the street though so I’m not sure it counts.
Beyond that, on more than one occasion I’ve had miscellaneous heavy, sharp, and/or pointy things that have frequently been stacked too high in a wagon or SUV so that if a collision were to occur they would surely impale or bludgeon the driver and / or front passenger.
Well, I got an entire double futon — frame and mattress — into the back of my 87 Integra LS. Hatchback FTW!
But then there was the packing marvel that was putting almost everything I owned into a 1984 Crown Vic Police Package in RCMP blue. That thing had the mother of all trunks. I was heading home from university, and I put my steamer trunk in the middle dip in the cargo compartment, surrounded it with milk crates full of crap…I mean worldly posessions, and then stuffed in whatever else I could around those. Finally, I put my guitars, my amp and suitcases et al in the back seat. To hell with the Carolina Squat, I had the Carleton U squat!
Then I drove my mom and my stuff the 3 and a half hours home, nose pointed towards the sky, in an old cop car.
And no, on that trip it did not go good on regular gas.
My parents were doing some landscaping and bought a tree from a nursery. This whole ass tree was somehow loaded into the trunk of a Toyota Camry and when they got home, no one could get it out of the car. Upon returning to the nursery, the tree was extracted from the car with a forklift so it could be delivered by truck.
I don’t know how odd this actually is, but we picked up the replacement engine for my nephew’s Volvo 850 with my Pacifica. A pickup would have been easier for the forklift and the tying down, but it got the job done with minimum (notice I didn’t say “no”) damage.
Taking weird loads in cars is a HELL of a Friday morning talking point.
My weirdest consistent load was my spouse (bear with me). When she had knee surgery, her leg was in a brace that keeps it from bending AT ALL. Folks, this woman wears pants with a 37″ inseam, and I drive a Sorento.
So, I unbolted the front passenger seat, replaced that area with patio cushions, and she rode around in the back seat next to our daughter, with her leg resting on the pillows.
I took that load consistently for 2 weeks.
I said what I said.
I had an old coworker with a similar brace who tore his achilles and was basically stuck at home because at 6’2″ of something like that he could only ride sideways sitting across the back seat, but was too tall to do that without hunching over, so anything more than a 2 minute ride was torture.
I think you’d appreciate /r/MiataLogistics.
The 745T I used to own (a few years newer and much rougher) fit an entire twin bed – mattress, box spring, frame – perfectly, with a nearly-flat load floor, but that’s not exceptional, it’s just good design. I was more impressed that I could fit a 240’s hood inside.
I’m most proud of shoving an 8′ 2×6 into my NG900 with the hatch closed.
I once helped my dad wedge a surfboard into a Toyota Avalon. Even looking back I’m not entirely sure how this worked. I don’t mean it was on the car, or hanging out of the car, it was in the car. Pretty sure it was diagonal from the passenger A pillar to the driver side C pillar.
I need to find my old photo albums, but when I was in Slovakia in 1995, my (semi-distant) relatives filled the trunk of their Lada with piglets to take to market.
Sure – admittedly perhaps not the most humane way to haul 8-10 wee piggies, but it was just post-Communism / post-separation from the Czech republic, literally the most central of Central Europe (read: akin to Pennsyltucky), and honestly there weren’t a lot of other options for them I think.
I had a long section of plastic downspout that I had to rest on my right mirror and stuck out forward about a foot and went all the way to the inside of the trunk lid in my 128i coupe. I also fit my entire drum set in that car once.
I have never really had a normal car have always had trucks or SUV’s. But I did fit a normal sheet of drywall into the back of my firebird (yay hatchback).
I’ve done sofa on an Outback roof rack several times. It looks crazy but is within the weight limits, so as long as well strapped, it’s nothing to worry about.
After junior year of college I had to get my snowmobile, a ’74 Johnson JX400 from school back home, 464 miles. My car was an ’84 Jetta GLI. I took the engine out and put it on the passenger side floor. I took the skis off and put them in the trunk, took the hood off and fit that into the back seat area and then put the tub (hull?) of the sled, nose first, into the trunk. 2/3 of the sled hung out the back of the car, but it was pretty secure. Then, I slid two VW Beetle doors into the back of the car behind the front seats with the snowmobile hood behind those. I got the doors for free and couldn’t turn them down. Packed all my clothes and crap around all that mess, and made my way home. It did it, but it looked REALLY stupid and in retrospect, I should have just scrapped the sled and not even bothered. Live and learn, I guess.