walk in freezer

[dmccarty]

We have a local rancher that sells their meat at farmers markets and around town. She has a large covered trailer with 4-5 big chest freezers. She pulls the trailer with a F350 dually from location to location. They have some of the best beef I have ever eaten.

The meat was frozen rock hard.

I do not know if she was powering the freezers when she was on the road or selling. I saw that she did have power access on the outside of the trailer. I think when she go home she just plugged the freezers into the grid.

An earlier post sound like you might have considered multiple chest freezers but I was not sure. What the rancher came up with is a simple and cheap solution to get her product from location to location. It might work for you even if you do not have a need to haul the meat.

Really depends on the cost of the walk in vs a bunch of chest freezers.

I need to go buy some of her beef. IT was the best. She had a story about converting a vegetarian back into a meat eater. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Later,
Dan

 

[jayste]

Duffster and maybe others mentioned using one of these. The price is right (if it works) but it's in Oklahoma!

refrigirated truck body

 

[marimus]

What about a refrigerated shipping container? Might be a cheap option for a second hand unit, then again might not be available anywhere near your area.

Something to think about mabey?

 

[merrickvilleguy]

We have a local rancher that sells their meat at farmers markets and around town. She has a large covered trailer with 4-5 big chest freezers. She pulls the trailer with a F350 dually from location to location. They have some of the best beef I have ever eaten.

The meat was frozen rock hard.

I do not know if she was powering the freezers when she was on the road or selling. I saw that she did have power access on the outside of the trailer. I think when she go home she just plugged the freezers into the grid.

An earlier post sound like you might have considered multiple chest freezers but I was not sure. What the rancher came up with is a simple and cheap solution to get her product from location to location. It might work for you even if you do not have a need to haul the meat.

Really depends on the cost of the walk in vs a bunch of chest freezers.

I need to go buy some of her beef. IT was the best. She had a story about converting a vegetarian back into a meat eater. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Later,
Dan

I think thats what I may have to do ... after talking around I am looking in the $10k range ... which is insane for styrofoam and a thin sheet of metal ... but, I can probably stagger my slaughters and deliveries so that I pick up from the butcher and deliver right away to avoid on site storage.

The biggest freezer i have found is 25cuft, so thats roughly 7 lambs ... 3 freezers would do all the lambs I'm looking do do for sale next year

the same 3 would fit 225 chickens ... which is more than I plan on doing at one go (150 twice) so that'd work so long as I didn't have to prolong the storage such that I'd be dealing with both of them at the same time which shouldn't be too hard

weight on that would be 600lbs for the freezers, and 1100lbs for the lambs (nearly 1600lbs for the chickens) ... so my snowmobile trailer wont cut it ha.

at $850 a pop a sears, thats $2900 after tax, add on $5k for that 6x10' dump trailer I've been wanting (and will play dual duty here) and still under that a built in freezer will run me

 

[MarkV]

Not to pry, but is the return in profit enough to justify the kind of costs you are looking at? It sounds like you have done it on a smaller scale in the past with what you already have. Will the added investment pay itself off in a short time? Are there tax benefits in Canada to make it worth the investment? Just curious!

MarkV

 

[merrickvilleguy]

I gross $4/lb on chicken and $5/lb on lamb, so this expansion will allow me to go away from the 50 chickens I did this year (and filled my freezer while waiting to deliver) and a few lambs I had butchered after the chickens were gone.

I average a carcass weight on the white rocks around 7 1/2 lbs, so the added 250 chickens in around $7500 gross, and the 20 extra lambs is another $5000 gross ... while feed and purchase costs take about 1/2 that ... the extra income ought to nearly cover it

Now keep in mind ... the trailer will be useful more than just at delivery time, it's just going to pull double duty (and gives me more justification)

as best I know there aren't any grants available (plenty of loans though) from the govt either on the fed or provincial level