Ozark Trail "High Performance" cooler - any good?

[Hilldweller]

Those are not the types of inflatable tires we use to haul stuff around on the beach... We use stuff like this http://www.beachcartsusa.com/, you can roll several hundred pounds, even launch watercraft, with little effort. Most people buy the wheels and build their own cart.

Cool carts. Pricey but they really look like they're designed to work.

I was checking some of them out on the website and something about one of the photos didn't look right. Or maybe it looked too right...
Are my eyes off or does this kid have two right feet?

 

[another_mike]

Cool carts. Pricey but they really look like they're designed to work.

I was checking some of them out on the website and something about one of the photos didn't look right. Or maybe it looked too right...
Are my eyes off or does this kid have two right feet?

haha, you can kinda see a 3rd sandal! Good catch.

 

[JPaul]

More like 4 sandals. Apparently they wanted a picture of her walking, but only had one of her standing. You can see part of her left foot and shin when you look closely. They copied her legs as she was standing and then used that to make it look like she was walking. It's really a terrible Photoshop job, whoever did that clearly didn't care much.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[Hilldweller]

More like 4 sandals. Apparently they wanted a picture of her walking, but only had one of her standing. You can see part of her left foot and shin when you look closely. They copied her legs as she was standing and then used that to make it look like she was walking. It's really a terrible Photoshop job, whoever did that clearly didn't care much.

I think that one of you guys with better skills should tweak the photo. Give her a really long tongue or something. Have Harry Potter (or Scott Brady) grabbing that extended arm...

 

[Kerensky97]

I got the Ozark Trail 72. Used one trip, did a great job of holding in the cool, lasted 4 days and still had ice.

A week after I got home and cleaned it out I opened it up again and the inside had warped.
No outside damage, it was all internal like the insulation and plastic had expanded and delaminated. It happened between after trip cleaning, and 1 week of sitting in the living room.

Because it was under 30 days I was able to return it to Walmart for a refund as defective. But I was hesitant enough I decided not to buy one for my dad for father's day.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

 

[Hilldweller]

I got the Ozark Trail 72. Used one trip, did a great job of holding in the cool, lasted 4 days and still had ice.

A week after I got home and cleaned it out I opened it up again and the inside had warped.
No outside damage, it was all internal like the insulation and plastic had expanded and delaminated. It happened between after trip cleaning, and 1 week of sitting in the living room.

Because it was under 30 days I was able to return it to Walmart for a refund as defective. But I was hesitant enough I decided not to buy one for my dad for father's day.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

Wow.
Contact them and show them ------ they've been very responsive with all of our input so far. I'm sure they'd like to know how that happened.

 

[CamFromCI]

I got the Ozark Trail 72. Used one trip, did a great job of holding in the cool, lasted 4 days and still had ice.

A week after I got home and cleaned it out I opened it up again and the inside had warped.
No outside damage, it was all internal like the insulation and plastic had expanded and delaminated. It happened between after trip cleaning, and 1 week of sitting in the living room.

Because it was under 30 days I was able to return it to Walmart for a refund as defective. But I was hesitant enough I decided not to buy one for my dad for father's day.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

Wow thanks for sharing Kerensky,

I work for the manufacturer and I'm definitely going to forward on your experience & photos to the team. This is definitely not the norm so I'm sure the team will appreciate seeing this. I may check back in next week with a few more questions once they've had a look at the photos.

Thanks again,
Cam

 

[dusmw]

Just picked up the 52 in white. Also have the 25 in gray.

Kind of a cooler addict! Have yeti and Rtic in both hard and soft.

Figured the OT 52 in white will not disappear out of my truck bed like the others. Will still run a cable through it discreetly to help keep the honest folks honest.

The Rtic 45 and OT 52 will get real world tested this weekend, pre cooling them tonight and will load up tomorrow for the trip to the lake.

Happy Birthday America and thank you active duty and veterans for your service!

 

[jeep-N-montero]

I got the Ozark Trail 72. Used one trip, did a great job of holding in the cool, lasted 4 days and still had ice.

A week after I got home and cleaned it out I opened it up again and the inside had warped.
No outside damage, it was all internal like the insulation and plastic had expanded and delaminated. It happened between after trip cleaning, and 1 week of sitting in the living room.

Because it was under 30 days I was able to return it to Walmart for a refund as defective. But I was hesitant enough I decided not to buy one for my dad for father's day.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

About the only way I could picture this happening is if the cooler were strapped to a hitch cargo carrier with the exhaust blowing right onto it inches away, the heat would soften it and the pressure from the strap would cause it to warp/cave in. But seeing as you drive a truck I would imagine it was sitting in the bed nice and cool, the mystery remains....

 

[Kinger]

I ended up picking up the 72 for a trip we took a few weeks ago. Great features and design. OK performance so far? It's my first "fancy" cooler so I don't have much to compare it to. Sometimes I find myself thinking the ice is melting faster than expected. Other times it seems OK. And yes I always pre-cool. It must be related to the weather or something (even under a tonneau in the bed it still gets freakin' hot in the Florida heat!).

Bottom line - I'm never going on a trip where I have no access to ice for a week (a few days max) so it's fine. It does pretty well, I would like to compare it to other mid-priced coolers sometime. We did a solid 3, maybe 4 days without refilling with ice, and while there was a lot of water it was still cold with lots of ice. We also planned our meals to be meat heavy early on so stuff where ice was critical was gone later in the trip.

 

[jeep-N-montero]

I ended up picking up the 72 for a trip we took a few weeks ago. Great features and design. OK performance so far? It's my first "fancy" cooler so I don't have much to compare it to. Sometimes I find myself thinking the ice is melting faster than expected. Other times it seems OK. And yes I always pre-cool. It must be related to the weather or something (even under a tonneau in the bed it still gets freakin' hot in the Florida heat!).

Bottom line - I'm never going on a trip where I have no access to ice for a week (a few days max) so it's fine. It does pretty well, I would like to compare it to other mid-priced coolers sometime. We did a solid 3, maybe 4 days without refilling with ice, and while there was a lot of water it was still cold with lots of ice. We also planned our meals to be meat heavy early on so stuff where ice was critical was gone later in the trip.

You may or may not already know this, but those tonneau covers hold in a ton of heat, not surprised at all your ice melts faster.

 

[Kinger]

For sure. That's just one situation of several.

 

[CamFromCI]

About the only way I could picture this happening is if the cooler were strapped to a hitch cargo carrier with the exhaust blowing right onto it inches away, the heat would soften it and the pressure from the strap would cause it to warp/cave in. But seeing as you drive a truck I would imagine it was sitting in the bed nice and cool, the mystery remains....

These photos have definitely made their rounds around our offices and manufacturing facilities.

We've never seen such warping like this before. There are a lot of these coolers out on the market now, so this is definitely an isolated case.

Kerensky, if you see this, do you remember if the walls of the cooler felt particularly pliable or soft before or after this occurred? I'm just wondering if somehow this cooler was a one-off that ended up with thin inner walls out of the molding process... It's hard to tell but we haven't seen this before so it's only a theory.

Regardless, I'm glad Walmart was able to sort it out for you. In the future, if something like this ever happens to anyone, of course this would be covered under warranty, but we'd love to do the exchange on our end (the manufacturer) so we can get the cooler shipped to us for review (we'd cover the shipping cost).

Thanks again for documenting this,
Cam

 

[Robert Bills]

To CamFrom CI:

Private message sent re my 26 qt. Ozark Trail high performance cooler. I also sent a copy of my PM to you by email via service@ca-innovations.com

I hope you will be able to help me.

 

[Kerensky97]

These photos have definitely made their rounds around our offices and manufacturing facilities.

We've never seen such warping like this before. There are a lot of these coolers out on the market now, so this is definitely an isolated case.

Kerensky, if you see this, do you remember if the walls of the cooler felt particularly pliable or soft before or after this occurred? I'm just wondering if somehow this cooler was a one-off that ended up with thin inner walls out of the molding process... It's hard to tell but we haven't seen this before so it's only a theory.

Regardless, I'm glad Walmart was able to sort it out for you. In the future, if something like this ever happens to anyone, of course this would be covered under warranty, but we'd love to do the exchange on our end (the manufacturer) so we can get the cooler shipped to us for review (we'd cover the shipping cost).

Thanks again for documenting this,
Cam

Thanks for the follow up.

No it wasn't pliable at all.
I should have taken a picture of the outside of the cooler because it was immaculate. It looks like it was dropped 3 stories onto a spike but the outside was completely untouched, and unwarped.
I pressed on the crease on the inside to see if I could pop it back into shape easily but it was pretty firm. I would have had to try standing on it and using my full body weight to pop it back into position. Which confused me all the more because that meant it would have taking some force to bend it out of shape.

I do remember there being a slight vacuum when I opened it and noticed the distortion because of temperature or air pressure difference over the course of a week. But it was relatively minimal, especially compared to when I emptied it earlier that week. I last closed it in the mountains, drove down home and it was vacuum sealed shut until I got some ventilation unscrewing the water drain. There was no distortion then compared to the end of the week when I was able to open it by hand.