How to transport your half cow back home
This is how your half cow is going to look upon arrival
When picking up your half cow from our ranch or the butcher, you’re probably wondering what you’ll need for the trip back home. Thankfully it’s a lot easier than you think!
We’ve seen every approach from people throwing the boxes into the open bed of a pickup truck (a bit dicey!) to folks that brought their whole deep freezer with a generator (a bit much!). The reality is that you don’t need to buy a bunch of stuff or borrow a friends truck.
How much space do I need in my vehicle?
Our old delivery vehicle could fit 2 cows worth of beef in the back of it!
200+ lbs of beef is a LOT of beef, but smaller in size than you’d think!
A half cow is usually 5-7 boxes. Our butcher packs the cuts in cardboard with slots cut out in the sides to help them freeze uniformly. The boxes are 20.5”Lx 14”W x 7”H. A half cow will easily fit into any backseat/trunk of an average car.
Our delivery vehicle for years was a Honda fit. Customers would be expecting their rancher to be showing up in a lifted F-450, and instead we would show up in a little blue clown car! We could fit 4 half cows in there!
Any vehicle you’re bringing will be able to easily fit a half cow. And a whole cow will fit in most sedans between the trunk and the backseat.
How do I keep it cold? (1-4 hour trips)
Moving blankets, towels and comforters help a lot!
Despite what you might think, it’s not going to be a race against the clock to get home. Beef when packed tightly together can hold its temp for a lot longer than you think. Some defrosting is entirely normal. It will not affect the quality of safety of the beef.
The easiest thing that we recommend bringing is a large blanket! Moving blankets are super helpful, but a heavy comforter/quilt will also do the trick. If you cluster the boxes together and cover them with a blanket or two, it helps the beef stay insulated, and will arrive with minimal defrosting. Towels are also handy for this!
Coolers are great to bring if you already own them, but not required. You also do not need to have enough coolers for every single cut. They’re handy for storing the thinner cuts/ground beef that can defrost faster. If you’re traveling for less than 4 hours, you probably don’t need to use ice packs. As long as the lid closes, it will hold its temp! You can leave larger roast cuts outside of the coolers as they will hold their temp for longer than thin cuts.
How to I keep it cold (4+ hour trips)
A 120 qt cooler will fit MOST of a half cow.
For longer trips, all of the above methods still apply, but its probably a good idea to add some additional help to maintain the coldness.
Bags of ice are the cheapest and most effective way to reinforce coldness, but with one important note: Do not break open the bags. As the ice thaws and turns into cold water it will begin to thaw the submerged cuts at the bottom. Placing a bag of ice on top of the coolers/boxes will help it maintain coldness. (Cold air moves down, hot air moves up!)
Dry ice is also helpful and you can get it at some HEB checkouts, but it is VERY important to note that you cannot let the dry ice directly touch the beef or it will freezer burn them. Use a towel to separate the dry ice and the cuts. Also be careful if you’re using an airtight cooler like a yeti. Dry ice is a sublimate, meaning it turns from solid to gas. If its in an airtight container it could pop!
An overly detailed side note on cooler size:
A half cow will take somewhere between 8-9 cubic feet of freezer space. Coolers don’t usually list cubic feet, and instead use quarts. We’ve found that most of a half cow will fit in a 120 quart “coffin” cooler with a bit of overflow. So our best guess is around 200 qts of cooler space.
Will a half cow leak or leave a mess in my car?
A half cow generally should NOT leave any sort of mess in your car. There’s always a rare chance that a cut has a loose seal, but even so, it should not be leaking through cardboard. The most common thing in summer months would be a little bit of condensation that can be damp. If you’re nervous about this, a towel will be more than enough.
I’m home but some cuts are defrosted! Is that okay?
Yes! As long as the cuts are a refrigerated temp or 38 degrees or colder (which is basically saying they feel cold to the touch), they will refreeze without any loss of quality. Sometimes the beef that you’re picking up was processed a couple of days before and doesn’t have a hard/multi-day freeze on it yet. There’s some myths/misunderstandings about refreezing (which you can check out more on here) but the reality is that the beef you get at the grocery store meat counter has been previously thawed and refrozen multiple times. Your half cow will have only had one freeze on it.
Of course, if you are ever unsure or don’t like the look of a particular cut, it should go without saying that you do not need to use it. Just let us know and we are always happy to replace anything that doesn’t seem right. Food safety is our #1 priority.
If you have more questions, let us know! We’re always here to help.
-Max
