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
Two complete diner booths, with tables, in a ’76 El Dorado convertible.
Oh and a 22 foot long steam powered model battleship on the roof of a ’54 Land Rover. 100 miles at 30 mph.
A couple of goats;
1 650 pounds of ceramic tiles;
An apartments worth of IKEA junk that forced us to ride with the trunk doors completely open during a snow storm with the low battery light flickering.
You know, the usual. Nothing special.
I transported a 600# rock engraved with my last name in the trunk of a 1975 Chrysler Newport. Received as a wedding gift which occurred 450 miles from our home. Rolled it onto a folded blanket and four of us each grabbed a corner and loaded it. Accidentally took it out all by myself once I got home and nearly died in the process. THAT is a story in itself.
A 4 piece wood adirondack style patio set (table, four chairs, and umbrella) that we bought 500 miles from home on a whim, in the back of a 2-dr 2004 Honda Civic. The patio set plus our luggage just BARELY fit.
I worked at Target back in the day…I’m the one who was tasked with loading large items into their car (hated entertainment centers in a box and treadmills!) I cant count the number of times someone would buy whole patio set and get miffed that couldnt get it to fit in their sedan.
That’s unimaginable. Photos or it didn’t happen. Even if you took the furniture apart…
I once loaded a really cool teak highboy dresser I picked up at a thrift store into a Ford EXP and was able to completely close the hatch. I miss small hatchbacks.
Two giant folders full of my favorite CDs. Had someone break into my car and steal the CD player. Then they looked at what Albums I had in my giant collection and left them behind.
Actually, thinking about what albums were in that collection and how much I listened to them, I think I carried something even weirder than that in my car just this morning….
ME.
A motorcycle (Honda F4) completely inside a mini van.
Christmas tree completely inside a Pontiac Vibe (trunk was hovering over the shifter from between the seats up front.
I’ve hauled all other manner of stuff inside a Saturn Vue but would not consider it weird. Amazing what you can fit in cars.
But nothing is better than the guy I see shoveling wood chips into the back of his Buick Park Avenue on almost a monthly basis when the local park dumps a pile for the public to use.
Hey, the wood chips were free! ‘Free’ is usually the beginnings of these type stories.
I helped move a king sized mattress thrown across the hood of a mid 70’s Lincoln MkIV luxoyacht. The move was only about 1/3 mile on a narrow single lane dirt road at the bottom of a steep canyon following a stream.
My job was to lay on the mattress as my buddy sloooowly drove from the old place to the new. This was the last big object of the day and night was quickly falling. By the time we got going it was quite dark.
The experience was surreal. The floaty suspension of the Lincoln, the purr of its massive 460 V8 and the lights illuminating the country road really made the experience as close to riding a magic carpet dream reality as one could hope for.
Maybe not “weird” exactly, but when I was 19 I was moving back home cross-country after a failed college try — I had a 1998 Audi A4 sedan with a soft rooftop carrier so I could fit all my stuff (thankfully no furniture, just personal belongings).
About 30 miles into the trip from Florida back to Minnesota, the rooftop carrier fell off the car onto the freeway. Fortunately, there was a State Trooper several cars back who saw it and was able to divert traffic so we could pick it up.
Astonishingly, there was no major damage to any of my items, but the canvas carrier was donezo. So my friend and I had to fit everything that was in the carrier (all the stuff that — by definition — did not fit into the already-full car itself) into, well, the car itself.
So the rest of the trip was spent with this tiny car full to the ceiling with random, loose belongs. Clothes, books, video games, kitchen utensils, etc, all just sort of mixed together in a stew of teenage 2nd-hand slop smooshing up against every window and body panel.
Thankfully, we made it back without incident!
My ’85 Caprice – most likely the water softener I drug home, sticking out of the trunk (almost completely vertically!) along with a few 10′ long pieces of copper pipe. I’ve also carried pieces of galvanized pipe home on it that were fastened sideways to my bicycle rack, like a sweet spoiler. And in college, an old chair/desk combo from the ’60s that I’d snagged from Ohio State when I left…it fit in the trunk with the trunklid closed.
I carted some 16′ long crown molding home in my ’06 Altima, jammed up against the base of the windshield. I’m surprised I didn’t crack it.
I’ve carried some bulk items home in my convertible by putting the top down and sticking them out the top. But that was pre-planned usage of my vertical space available and I took that car to the hardware store on purpose.
I’ve also carried a crockpot of chili on the back of my motorcycle for the work chili cook-off, and bought a 6-gallon pancake compressor and rested it on my handlebars for the 3 blocks down the street to where my wife’s car was at the time so I could put it in there and get it delivered home.
That’s the best one yet: “I’ve also carried a crockpot of chili on the back of my motorcycle for the work chili cook-off”
Since you were talking about chili I got confused for a minute and thought a pancake compressor was some kind of device for making industrial quantities of pancakes.
I love doing that with my convertible! The time I rented scaffolding from the local hardware store and hauled it with a ’72 Delta 88 is certainly the dumbest and sketchiest thing I’ve carried, but it did work!
Getting flashbacks of a collision scene I rolled up on years ago where a wagon carrying sheets of 3/4” plywood in the cargo area had been violently rear-ended. Horizontal guillotine.
Nothing that can’t self-crush EVER goes behind me in a passenger car.
I’m afraid I don’t have a story, as I have always planned accordingly and found/rented the right vehicle for the load. For years I was the only one in my group of friends with a truck, so I hauled many things for others to avoid them being a road hazard for those around them.
Yesterday I saw a guy going down I-24 in a BMW convertible with the top down, with his front bumper in the passenger seat, holding it in place with his right hand at 70mph.
I’ve moved a few arcade games, first in my 86 Plymouth Voyager with the rear seat removed, later in my 87 Volvo 245: https://king-dead.net/arcade/i/rr/02.jpg
Now I move them with a Silverado like any other red-blooded American man.
I carried a 46″ plasma TV home in the back of a C4 Corvette. It fit perfectly. It looked like something from Pimp My Ride.
The last TV my mother bought was sized around her ’87 El Camino. Turns out you can put a 65″ in the bed.
Sure, that’s using a truck as intended, but there were some looks.
Weirdest would be my cousin Tracy.
People named Tracy are best to be avoided.
I’ve never met a Tracy that was a normal person!!
I carried a 1971 Triumph GT6 long block in the back of my ’96 Golf on a 4-hour drive from Atlanta to southeast Georgia. It was loaded with a forklift and unloaded by me looping a ratchet strap around it and pulling it onto a disused mattress.
A huge box of ceiling tiles in the passenger seat of an MGB, with my college roommate crammed in the space behind the seats (maybe 12″ by 3 feet by a foot deep, but nicely carpeted). This was in the days when the top was in the trunk. We WERE pulled over by the Mass, State Police. The Trooper must have been having a very good day because he bought my claim that the space behind the seats was ‘for occasional passenger use’ and let us go with advice to stop that s&%t.
I did a 5 hour drive in my FRS with a moped in the trunk once, but never thought about it as strange….
I once had to carry a load of seven deceased spider monkeys in the hatch of my
96 Geo Metro LSi. Although the statute of limitations has already passed, y’all are never going to know why. Although I’m sure that y’all will come up with some pretty creative idea.
I know a guy who drove a load of five LIVE owl monkeys from Maryland to Florida in a FIAT 500…
To Mar-a- lardo?
They were all later discovered next to tiny bicycles in the park no doubt.
Not odd, but in Dec. ’89 moving from CC to Houston the rental van I was driving broke down around about half way. Texas was in massive cold outbreak. Froze in the van until daybreak. Spotted a trailer off in a field and convinced the owner to let me use the phone. Called my brother and he drove my Isuzu Impulse to rescue me. We piled all the furniture in and on the car. We looked like Sanford and Son. The state police pulled up along side of us, and after a good laugh they went on their way.
As a daily motorcycle commuter reading these comments, I’m going to go hide under the bed and hug myself for a little while…
One can fit plenty of stuff on a motorcycle:
https://klyker.com/heavily-loaded-motorcycles/
Bath tub with the seats down in my model 3. I was almost able to close the trunk all the way.
Or the time I moved goats in the back of my dodge journey. Cut a piece of cattle panel up and attached it to the back of the 2nd row seat, put down a sheet of foam insulation over the floor then lined the entire back with a tarp. Didn’t end up messy and the goats moved in air conditioned comfort.
I think the closest thing to weird was picking up a 1986 Honda Spree with my 1991 Escort 2-door hatchback. It fit fine on its side and I was still able to close the hatch. It instantly doubled the value of the car too!
I also fit an extension ladder in that car with one end almost up against the windshield, and the other at the very back of the hatch, with all seats but the driver’s folded down.
Other than that, mostly just using cars for truck stuff, like loading lumper and sod in an Astra, or gravel and topsoil in a 300D. Pretty cheap way to lower a car, albeit only in the rear.
The only thing that would actually fit the “risk of being pulled over” part would be last year when I towed my broken car trailer from Albuquerque back to SE Michigan with only 3 wheels. It was empty, so well under the weight capacity of the remaining tires, but every time I passed a cop in the median, I was sure they were going to pull out and turn the lights on. Nope. Not even one of them did.
8 foot 2 By Fours through the middle seat trunk access hole up to the front windshield in a 2006 Chrysler 300C. Worked, but still.