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.
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 once had to strap a stretcher to the top of a 95 Chevy Suburban. The Suburban was the work truck for the fleet maintenance shop I worked for that primarily repaired ambulances. One day they needed a stretcher for a different unit, so we became a stretcher transport vehicle. It got some strange looks, to say the least.
A couple cases not mine but amusing nonetheless:
My childhood neighborhood was suburban but heavily wooded and quite hilly with twisty roads so it was always a sight to behold whenever a neighbor a couple of streets over would routinely tow multiple catamarans and canoes with their Nash Metropolitan, which was some 20 to 25 years old at the time, through the neighborhood. Funnily enough around that time there was an episode of CHiPs where they had to deal with a runaway MG B towing exactly the same kind of rig with catamarans on a mountain road: https://imcdb.org/i163490.jpg My family joked about the writers having been inspired by our neighbor’s catamaran-towing Nash Metropolitan.
A friend sometimes fondly reminisces about the time when she was a kid she and her dad picked up a used Honda QA50 like this one https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/motorcycles/item/honda-qa50-1970/ for her. He was driving an old Plymouth Satellite four-door sedan and my friend vividly remembers how he simply crammed the QA50 in the backseat to take it home. He just didn’t bother with using the trunk. Pretty funny.
Drove a Simmons sleeper sofa tied to the roof of a ’78 Impala from Washington DC to Morgantown WV. Quite the adventure.
Not three but four or five pallets on my Audi S4 Avant. A stack of 20-ft lumber on same. A full set of construction and mechanic tools in the back. That thing swallows up quite a lot for being as small as it is.
Five full size railroad ties in the Chevy S10. (They have a lot of gravity to them. That was definitely overloaded.)
I’m sure there are others as well.
I transported an L-head six engine out of a 1937 Plymouth P4 about 750 miles inside a 1969 SAAB Sonett V4 after removing the passenger seat. Out of a proper consideration for safety I did manage to get the seat belt secured around it. The folks at the machine shop were impressed. Perhaps not favorably impressed, but definitely impressed.
In my Tracker, at various times:
I wrangled a very very heavy 1′-6″x2′-0″x8′-0″ boxed steel frame into the trunk of my 1985 Mercedes 300D. A car without a folding rear seat. It looked absolutely ridiculous to have a giant chunk of metal sticking 4′ out the back but I also used every bungee cord in existence so it was fine.
One time in high school I was on an overseas military installation with two halves and a city road between the two. I was one of two friends that had a car and this particular time the other guy couldnt drive so we had one more friend than seatbelts. This was a 1996 Crown Victoria so we made the (very poor) decision to put the extra friend in the trunk and hope we weren’t searched as we went through the police gate going from one half of the post to the other. It would have been a big deal if we got caught but thankfully we didn’t!
I put a dead antelope I had just shot (legally) in the back seat of my 2000 Lexus ES300. It was at least in an open top cooler, but my car stunk for 4 days. I was invited to go and couldn’t turn down the opportunity! The hunting party, all with Jeeps or trucks, didn’t know what to make of me and my Lexus but I think by the end I had at least earned a little respect. They got a good laugh out of it.
Once, shortly after buying my house which needed some fixing up, I bought a six-foot stepladder (the old-timey substantial and heavy wooden kind used by professionals, not at all flimsy or minimal) at the local big box hardware store thinking I could just stick it in the trunk of my 1981 Datsun 210 2-door (alas, not a hatchback but a three-box notchback) with the trunk lid up and strapped down only to find I’d left the straps at home. So I moved the front passenger seat as far forward as possible, cranked the seatback down as much as possible, and moved the driver’s seat forward enough to still allow me sit with my knees up but still able to operate all three pedals & use the shift stick and managed to fit the *entire* stepladder inside by maneuvering it into the rear passenger compartment; kept all the windows rolled up, no less, which was a good thing, as it started pouring as soon as I had succeeded in the endeavor. It’s been nearly 30 years since that feat and I’m still kinda pleased (perhaps slightly irrationally so) with myself about that.
My parents would fondly reminisce about the time my dad brought home the Christmas tree in their oval-window Beetle early in their marriage (they had bought the Beetle used shortly after they were married in 1955, in Michigan, no less) and since it turned out he was the last customer of the day at the Christmas tree lot they had run out of rope for tying down the tree so my dad just rolled back the sunroof (canvas FTW!!) and stuck the Christmas tree upright through the sunroof. My mom was still tickled several decades later about how she looked up from the kitchen sink, upon hearing the Beetle’s arrival, and saw through the kitchen window the Beetle with the tree sticking out of the sunroof pulling into the driveway. Yeah, rather a sight to behold.
YO MAM-
Probably a truck worth of mechanics tools in a 2006 Toyota Corolla.
My dad did that for YEARS.
Years ago I lived in a loft apartment with 16’ ceilings with my girlfriend (now wife). We had a horrible light fixture in the kitchen that hung all the way down from the ceiling. She really insisted that we change the light even though we rented the loft saying we could change it back when we moved.
I rented a 14’ A-frame ladder from Home Depot. I thought to myself, “the seats fold down in the Civic, no problem.” I had no real awareness of just how long that thing was. It turns out they’re even longer when folded down!
But, I folded the passenger seat down and crammed that ladder all the way to the windshield. It still stuck out the back of the Civic about 6’ or so. I say to myself, “it’s only about 3 miles home.”
Atlanta downtown streets are/were terribly bad and that ladder was bouncing so bad all the way home I just knew it was going to crack the windshield. Luckily I got it there in one piece.
Of course, that’s when I find the ladder doesn’t fit in the elevator. FML. I take it to the stairs. We’re only on the second floor but it is a stairwell with a 180 turn halfway up and the length of this thing is making that really hard. I think it took about 45 minutes of wrestling it up the stairs alone. I’m calling my girlfriend for help the whole time but she notoriously never looks at her phone. I’m calling some buddies but it’s right after work on a Friday night and nobody’s available.
Get the ladder in the apartment and switch out the light. A literal ten minute job. Another 20-30 minutes to wrestle it back down the stairs. As I’m cramming this thing back in the Civic, that’s when the girlfriend shows up. She sees me and looks all kinds of excited. “You put up the light!” Yes, you check your messages?
At this point it’s getting dark so I ask her to follow me back to Home Depot so I don’t get rear ended and have to buy the stupid thing. Bouncing all the way back, trying to hold it reasonably steady with my right arm while also having to shift. I get it back into the HD rental office and check out. The guy says, “that’ll be $14.” This was 2000. But Jesus mother-humping Christ I would have paid someone $250 to do this for me.
We moved out of that place after 18 months. I did not take the light with us.
I still can’t believe I survived my 20’s. Young adulthood should kill more of us than it does. All the stupid decisions…
740 lbs of firewood in a 2004 Sentra.
Goats, in a 1974 VW bus with no center row of seats. No, not GOATs like Lewis Hamilton, but actual dairy goats, and a bale of hay. We lived on a small farm with a herd of them (yes, I milked goats every morning all through high school). Mom bought three more goats, but we couldn’t use the stock trailer for whatever reason. I got sent to pick them up, so Voila! Me and three goats in a VW bus.
The 1980’s were a weird time.
Not a car but one day I stopped by Harbor Freight after a dentist appointment and rode home with a chainsaw and a toothbrush strapped to the back of my bike. I had fewer tailgaters that day for some reason.
Toothbrushes are pretty scary.
That would be a riding lawnmower, in the back of my ’77 Celica hatchback.
Took me about two hours to disassemble it enough to fit it all in with the hatch closed. I think the engine rode home in the passenger seat.
My parents weren’t thrilled, but hey I got it to the new house, where it needed to be.
Took about two days to reassemble it. It all worked great, though we could never figure out where one leftover spring was supposed to go.
I was young, stupid and poor back then. My current approach to a similar problem (I need to move a riding mower between properties about 20 miles apart) may be no less stupid – I just bought a 20 foot equipment trailer. I know I’m no longer young, and apparently not so poor anymore, but the jury is still definitely out on the stupid part.
(Yes, we’ll be using it for more than just the riding lawnmower.)
Weirdest? Probably the 15′ fiberglass dolphin I strapped to the roof of my ’91 Sidekick. Why? It was discarded as part of a remodel at the aquarium and I though it would make an excellent addition to my friend’s front lawn.
Not weirdest, but raised the most eyebrows? That would be the airsoft MP5A5 and G36K replica rifles that fell out of my gun bag after a day at the field. Of course said back was just lying in the back seat when I went through a seatbelt check. I don’t think I’ve ever been pulled over so fast in my life. Normally the bag would be in the trunk but this day I was in a hurry to get home. Thankfully, I am a white male in Canada.
My wife and her mother once pulled into the driveway with a vintage screen door tied to the top of her Toyota Avalon with bailing twine. They drove 40 miles, about half at 65 mph on the interstate. How it didn’t fold in half I’ll never know, and no we never installed it on our house.
12 ft Christmas tree strapped to the top of my 2001 focus (ratchet straps run through the rear windows rolled down. Had a cardboard tv box w staples removed, paint was fine.
800 lbs of pavers in the back of my 2002 CRV
An 18’x6’x2’ out the back of my 1982 Subaru wagon
500lbs of mulch in the backseat/rear trunk lid of my 1973 Delta 88 Royale
For the Subaru trip I strapped around the bottom of the car across the backseats with a chunk of 2×4 across the exhaust pipe to prevent burning through the strap then slammed the doors.
Oh, and a wheelchair on my ‘73? Honda CB360T 188 miles (parents’ house to my college apartment). Figuring out how to hold it down with those big-ass wheels in the way was the most work of the trip other than the now-gigantic sensitivity to cross winds.
Police pulled me over because I had a claymore sword visible in the back of a new Beetle.
There’s a reason, and it isn’t because I “studied the blade.” State commissioner for a Scottish clan, so I would go to the various highland games and set up the tent. Hospitality for clan members, help people find out about their heritage, etc. Mostly a good excuse to drink scotch with friends. Part of the tent setup was a replica claymore that was Colin Robinson levels of dull, but people liked to take pictures with it, especially kids. All the tent things stuffed in a new Beetle, right.
Driving to the event in the boonies of Virginia got pulled over by a local cop. Asked me to step out of the car, so I did. As soon as he saw the kilt he put two and two together and let me go.
I got pulled over once driving though rural Oklahoma on my way to a friends wedding for having a tail light out, and got yanked out of the car for cross dressing and being so obviously drunk that I was speaking unintelligibly. This cop did not put the kilt and Scottish accent together as quickly as yours did I’m afraid
Right after high school I was driving my parents’ gold Mercury Sable to visit a friend in Texas and got pulled over in one of those 55 to 25 small Oklahoma towns. “Going a little fast there aren’t you son, where are you headed?” “Dallas.” “Mind if I search your car?” Go ahead, whatever, I knew I didn’t have anything questionable with me. So, he goes through everything with a fine-tooth comb pulls a quart mason jar with soggy green in the bottom out of the cooler in the trunk and exclaims “haha, what’s this!” with the obvious glee that he’s got something on me. That good sir was the last dregs of the green tea to get me through the 7-hour drive… ????
Way back when, my then girlfriend (now wife) and I bought a partially burnt rocking chair at a flea market. At the time she was going to school about 100 miles from where I lived. I reupholstered the chair and delivered it to her with my Fiat X1/9. I took the roof off and positioned the chair between the windshield header and the roll bar, dangling into the passenger’s side, for the trip.
I once carried 100 square feet of sod in the back of a Toyota Matrix XR.
Multiple trees in the back seat of a Sebring convertible (best pickup truck I ever had). And 3 contractor bags full of blood-stained clothes in a rented Versa Note. Sadder and less sketchy than it sounds.
Can confirm, convertibles make great pickup trucks! Hauled a lot of lumber in my 5.0 Stang conv. before I finally bought a cheap trailer.
*dramatically loosens shirt collar with two fingers*
My mother in law.
Boy I tell ya…
I once gave a ride to Robin Williams. I wouldn’t necessarily call him a load, but the dude was definitely weird.