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
Pretty much every car my dad has owned, from a 1980’s Subaru station wagon, to a Chevy Astro (the best family van possible), to his current Lincoln Navigator has had cut up wool bags (8ft long, by 2.5 ft diameter plastic sausages) taped up to cover the back end, which was then filled with sheep or pigs to be taken to auction. Fun fact: You can fit at least 11 sheep (unshorn) in the back of an Astro, if you take the seats out.
For myself, my 18.5ft canoe looked pretty strange on the top of my 14ft Ford Focus until I upgraded to a Crown Vic.
Full-size fridge in a Honda Fit. I had to tie the hatch shut(ish) with rope and an orange flag but it got the old one to the dump.
The new one came home in the Fit as well but wasn’t full-size so it fit inside, in the box with space to spare and I left it standing unplugged in the kitchen overnight rather than just the 3 hours recommended by the manual after horizontal transportation.
Wish I could find pictures that I’ve taken of this exact subject/situation in the past, since I’m always shocked and pleased by how much crap you can fit into a car if you try. Sadly, it seems that none of those photos are recent enough to be sitting on my current/daily laptop… they must be on ‘retired’ previous computers that I haven’t yet moved the data off of (talk about procrastination).
Let me search this laptop’s drive a bit more… there must be something I have a photo of within the past 7-8 years or however long I’ve been using it…
…jeez, not much that I could find. I KNOW that I’ve dragged home half a ton of broken chunks of a concrete wall in my Volvo maybe 6 years ago (before I hurt my back), and I also brought home a 10′ x 4′ hot-water solar collector panel on the roof of that same car, and of course I dragged home about 25 SGI Indigo 2 Unix workstations in my A4 Golf TDI when Rhythm & Hues moved, and just a few years ago I brought home a nice stainless steel Bosch dishwasher in the trunk of my NA Miata and I’m sure I took a photo before I unloaded it (the trunk wouldn’t close of course… it was just held down with a bungy cord).
All I could find are a couple rather unimpressive snapshots of a bunch of network cable, patch panel, and a nice vintage panel from whoknowswhat, etc… that I also brought home in the Miata a few years ago:
https://imgur.com/a/ujPXZkg
…it’s not something giant, but at least it’s something sorta interesting, if not the weirdest or biggest thing I’ve ever dragged home.
I found a pic of the dishwasher in the Miata in my gmail sent folder, along with some chunks of tree that I brought home in the Volvo to split for firewood:
https://imgur.com/a/AXhgzDl
(you can see what I meant about the headliner glue giving up in the Volvo when it gets to be a couple decades old) 😉
All my Ikea shelves (IVAR) either inside the car (a Citroën AX) or on the roof (tied with a rock climbing rope and carabiners to the ski bars [because that was the only roof accessory I had and didn’t want to waste the money to buy some real bars for a one off travel)
I actually managed survive the 450 Km of motorways… But I think the poor AX was a bit overloaded, reaching 110Km/h was taking long minutes… and 130Km/h was definitely out of the question.
Obviously the back bench was folded and loaded with bits of the shelves and most of my PnP roleplaying book collection (MERP, RM, AD&D, GURPS, and more) up to the roof.
I once carried a potted lemon tree – with lemons – home in the back seat of my Mercedes-Benz CLK Convertible.
I have also carried home a small antique dresser home in the same backseat – but that wasn’t 5 feet tall either.
Oh, nice to have a convertible for that. 🙂 I had a ’98? CLK 320 myself (whatever the first year was in the states) but it was a hardtop. Pretty, but unreliable for me.
I recall once many years ago bringing home a tall cactus (maybe 6-7 feet high at the time, including the pot) in my A4 Golf TDI by carefully feeding the top of through the open sunroof. I splinted the whole thing in scrap cardboard and bungee cords so it wouldn’t bend/break in the wind during the drive home.
That cactus is about 10′ tall now (still in a pot, but a bigger one). “-)
I used to move my DJ gear in an R53 Mini. Packed to the gills, but it all fit. Thought I’ll say it’s not so very weird as just a lot in a small space.
It is exactly 7 feet, 10 1/2 inches from the base of the windshield to the lip of the trunk in a 2004 Civic. I know from all of the 8’ long lumber I brought home in it.
Drill press hanging out the back of a legacy wagon. Did I mention it was a floor model?
Building some Strong Tomato cages for my plants, I go into Tractor Supply to purchase Cattle Fencing ( which are 10′ by 4″ heavy wire welded fencing). I needed 2 sections and I when the Lady at the register “said you have something to take them home in?” I told I was going to use my Mini. The look I got.
I brought bolt cutters, and cut them into manageable sections and tied it on my roof.
I have also tied an Assembled Ikea small dining table to the open trunk of a rental car .
I’ve hauled so many engines in the back of old BMW wagons, and I’ve hauled lots of lumber sticking out of the window of sedans, because I’ll be damned if I have to borrow or rent a truck for anything other than moving house.
Two come to mind, although one wasn’t a car.
In high school my primary mode of transportation was a moped. It had a wire basket on the back to hold shopping bags and backpacks and such. I was doing a project involving a non-trivial length of PVC pipe and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to ride to the store to get it. I weaved it through the wires making up the basket and rode home looking like I was headed to a joust competition.
The other was more recent and involved squeezing a gigantic clock into my Prius. I had cleaned out the back hatch and had the seats down, thinking that would be plenty of room. Nope. Too big to fit through the hatch opening in any orientation. I ended up having to slide it in through the front passenger door and then somehow got it into the back.
The kicker is I found out after delivering it to my sister-in-law that it came apart into two smaller pieces that would have been much easier to transport. 😀
How about 60 pizzas in a BMW 325 convertible!
Small, Medium or Extra-Large Pizzas?
Mediums. The biggest problem is that once your stack gets to a certain height, the cardboard will start to collapse after a short time due to the moisture from the pizzas softening it. This happens faster if you have boxes of different sizes, and curiously, if this is the case you stack so that the smaller boxes are on the bottom!
The secret that enabled me to do this was I had a wind blocker that covered the two back seats, and I left the top up for the delivery. Since the run was so short, and my car was so full we didn’t even use heat bags – effectively my entire car was the heat bag. I stacked some on the front floorboards, some on the passenger seat, and then the rest in two levels in the back, some under the wind blocker sitting on the seat, and some on top of the wind blocker.
Not me, but my mother drove me and SEVEN other Freshmen basketball players to practice in the 1980’s in our 1981 Celica. The car sagged severely and I’m not sure the suspension was ever the same.
Wait… You’re saying that there were a total of NINE people crammed into an 81 Celica? I can’t even get my head around that.
We had to ride to a different school in Georgia for a combined activity with the GT (Gifted/Talented) students there, and the teacher had to drive the 5 of us. In her Chevette. There were only 5 of us, 12 years old, but we completely filled it up, with 2 of us riding in the hatch area.
The 80s really were a different time man… I used to ride to school with 4-5 of the neighbor kids in a mid-80s Nissan Sentra, which sucked, but not as bad as piling into a Chevette. I also have fond memories of sleeping on the floor of our Caravan during long road trips. Just zero regard for safety. My favorite was riding in my grandpa’s Econoline van that had no seatbelts, but did have a custom wood center console that had cupholders specifically designed to hold a low-ball glass. That way, when he and I would “go for a ride” (which usually meant “get the fuck away from grandma for a while”), he could bring his Manhattan along with him.
Hmm…my old Econoline had a custom made wood center console. Never tried a highball glass though.
My mom in the driver’s seat. Me in front passenger seat why someone sitting on my lap. Three sitting across the second row and one plopped on their laps. Two in the hatch in fetal position.
Not so much weird as cramming big objects in small cars. When I worked at the rental yard we had to load a,pressure washer into a Fiero. This was a big commercial unit about 3′ long and 2′ high. Years later we put a,similar one in the back of a Saturn SL2, and I ended up riding my bicycle to the gas station. People give you more room when you have a gas can on your bike.
Also when our kids were small we used to get strange looks from people with SUVs when we produced 2 bicycles a trail-a-bike, a Burley trailer and a picnic from a Ford Escort hatchback.
“So I was filming a gangbang…”
Sorry, I’ll let myself out.
Back in 1984-86 I worked in the purchasing department of a large hotel in South Jersey. At the time, i owned a 1983 Pontiac Ventura Hatchback, which had a massive cargo area with the rear seats folded flat.
One day, our produce distributor called to let us know his truck had broken down and had been towed to a shop. He was about 8 miles away and wasn’t sure if he would be able to deliver to us that day.
After a consultation with the purchasing director (who owned a Plymouth Sapporo) the Sous Chef (who rode his motorcycle in that day) any my other storeroom colleague (who took the bus to work) i was nominated to drive to the shop where the produce vendor’s truck was being worked on and pick-up our order.
Unfortunately for me, this was a Friday and our order was particularly large due to a number of functions that weekend. It took two trips, with the Ventura loaded down to max capacity with cases of lettuce, tomatoes, oranges and strawberries and other produce.
For my trouble, i got $5 cash for gas money from my boss and the chef had the kitchen cook me a 1/2lb burger plater with fried mushrooms (my favorite) and a bottle of Heineken for my dinner break. Totally worth it!
Decent compensation for the extra task and you got to be the hero for the day.
I wish i had thought to take pictures. I used to borrow my parent’s lawnmower in my Fiat 500. I had to stick the the handle (it didn’t fold) through the sunroof. It was fun!
A dead body.
Anyone you knew?
In my Honda Fit, I hauled a few loads of scrap metal as we prepared to sell my mom’s house after she passed.
And what I mean by ‘hauled a few loads’, I mean my Fit had the seats folded flat and the car was packed to the brim… including stuff in the front seat.
My dad was a machinist and he had all kinds of metal piping, sheet metal and other stuff. My siblings and I first kept what we wanted and/or what we could use. But there is only so much you can take. And there was a lot of crap.
One load had nearly 1000lbs of metal.
I hit a bear cub on the highway once. I figured waste not and took it home to eat it. Then I got a fun idea, I dropped it off in a park as a joke. True story. Really.
One load that consisted of: A brand new bathtub and two new toilets.
I sure utilized all of that cargo space!
( For my bathroom remodel)
I used to regularly haul long pieces (12+ feet) of dimensional lumber (2×4, 2×6, 2×12 once) in my Pontiac G6.
I hauled a load of sod in my Lincoln MKX once.
On a cold, icy winter day, I drove 45 minutes to Sioux Falls SD to pick up a 32 inch flat tube CRT TV that was on sale in the Best Buy ad. I got there, and they told me it was a mistake and that it was actually the curved tube model on sale. It was still a good deal, so I went with it. They came out the front door with the giant box with my TV, and it was too big to fit into my Pontiac Sunfire. So, we stood there in the cold wind unboxing the TV. It barely fit through the back passenger door with the front seat slid all the way forward. I had to slide the drivers seat forward an uncomfortable amount as well, and my girlfriend and I drove home with our new TV in the back seat with the electron gun sticking out between our heads.
Back in the late 90s when I raced dirt bikes, there was a guy that would show up for the races in his Chevy Beretta. He would partially disassemble his bike and put the frame in the back seat, the front suspension and wheel and the rear wheel in the trunk, and the plastic parts in the passenger seat. He was always the first one at the gates and spent most of the time before his races reassembling his bike.
Once again, Beretta FTW!
The last CRT TV I ever bought, and the first window air conditioner, both came home (on separate occasions) on the front passenger seat of a 1995 Toyota Tercel 2-door sedan, the first dual-airbagged car and last trunked sedan I ever owned, because they wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the car.
An engine in the back of a Legacy wagon, though probably not too weird. I moved everything I owned with that car minus a couch as there didn’t seem to be a safe way to secure it on the roof. An entire pallet of stuff nobody could believe I fit into a GR86. Add to that, 8 tires (4 mounted) and 9′ lumber with the trunk closed. Also, 1.5 yards of soil (in bags) in a Focus ST (about the same volume as a pickup with a 6′ bed). Last time I moved, I had the ST filled top to bottom, including over the center console, 3 kayaks on the roof (two of which are 17′), and 4 bikes off the back.
I own a first gen Kia Soul. I frequently treat it as a pickup truck/cargo van despite working somewhere that has many trucks I can borrow after hours as long as I replace the fuel I used.
A new dishwasher in the box will fit with the hatch closed, much to the surprise of the people at the store. Entire pump house for the cottage? Fit fine.
I also once fit a vertical shed (unassembled) in my Mustang once I took it out of the box.
Not necessarily weird, but several short-distance moves across town have meant a lot of throwing things in cars haphazardly.
Some friends and I go to a clearance sale of plants that happens regularly, where we can’t resist some plant bargains and end up having to do some creative packaging with the taller plants. I’ve gotten pretty good at packing them in cars of various sizes, usually requiring a lot of adjustments of the front seats to work and looking like a Rainforest Cafe delivery vehicle.
Where these cross over: when I last moved, I had to move the plants I acquired over the course of time, at once. One of the plant-friendly friends has a plain basic old Dakota, an ideal tool for the job. Many we just stood up in the bed for the short drive, including through a busy downtown, keeping it around 30mph max. For the most part everything survived.