B
EFORE YETI COOL-
ERS became so
popular that owners
began chaining them
to their truck beds to
prevent theft, before
copycat products
filled the shelves and
web stores of Bass Pro Shops and
REI, before the cult of Yeti made
incredibly expensive coolers so
desirable that it left us looking at
our old Igloos and Colemans with
distaste and distrust, there was a
man standing on a cooler aboard
a boat, casting for a wily redfish.
When you’re angling for red-
fish, as Roy Seiders was wont to do,
elevation is as important as your
rod and reel: A higher vantage
reduces glare and affords a better
view. Seiders, like many others,
sometimes jumped up onto his
cooler to gain an advantage.
But his wasn’t strong enough or
sturdy enough to stand on with-
out it cracking.
It’s hard to imagine now, in
this glorious new era of beverage-
chilling proficiency, that we once
had invited so many ineffective
coolers along with us while we
camped, fished, hunted, rafted,
road-tripped, BBQd, tailgated,
and cut loose for a weekend or lon-
ger. Those basic ice chests, mostly
unchanged since the ’70s, were a
weak link in our adventures.
Made of cheaper, injection-
molded plastic and with only
wispy insulation, their tops splin-
tered, handles broke, and wheels
fell off. Beer warmed and meat
spoiled, sometimes before camp
was set. Seiders wanted a cooler
that was as dependable as the rest
of his gear—something he could
stand on and that would keep his
catch fresh for as long as possible.
He found it, with his older
brother Ryan, at a trade show in- The siblings were there to
tend to their existing businesses—
Roy sold boats; Ryan made custom
fishing poles. But a chance sight-
ing of a small cooler with a blocky
shape would change the trajec-
tory of their careers, and upset the
entire cooler industry.
The model had a tough exterior
and enough insulation—as thick
as a fist, in spots—to keep bever-
ages icy for longer. In 2006, the
Seiders began selling a version of
the cooler under a new name: Yeti.
Unlike cheaper injection-
molded options, this new style
of cooler relied on a manufactur-
ing process called rotomolding,
which is used to make whitewa-
ter kayaks and other gear that
takes a pounding. During con-
struction, the cooler mold is filled
with polyethylene resin and spun
while heated to distribute the
material. You get a super-strong
one-piece shell with uniform
wall thickness and a stronger top
and bottom.
Yeti’s Tundra arrived two years
later and elevated our notion of
what a great cooler could be. It
had rope handles that are almost
impossible to break, rubberT-latches, and a leak-proof drain
plug. Closing the lid, with its wide
gasket, felt as satisfying as slam-
ming shut a walk-in refrigerator.
At $225, the original Tundra
cost five times more than other
options, but Yeti gave it a five-year
warranty and hyped the durabil-
ity in a series of YouTube videos.
In one, a 500-pound strongman
jumped on the lid before f linging
the cooler off a cliff; the Tundra
survived undamaged. It was a con-
vincing argument for anyone who
had grown tired of replacing their
coolers almost annually; Yeti sold
$5 million worth that year.
Ten years later, Yeti’s sales
have blown past $770 million and
the Tundra, and coolers like it, are
nearly ubiquitous at campgrounds,
on fishing boats, and at backyard
BBQs. Igloo now has a rotomolded
cooler. So does Pelican. And new
brands like RTIC and Orca have
arrived with Tundra look-alikes
that work just as well. What it all
means is that we many never have
to suffer a cracked cooler or warm
beer again.Meet the Bears That Test Coolers
If you’re a brand
like Yeti and
want to certify
your product as
bear-resistant,
there’s only
one place to go:
The Interagency
Grizzly Bear Com-
mittee (IGBC)
at the Grizzly &
Wolf Discovery
Center (GWDC) in
Yellow s to n e, M o n-
tana. The agency
offers the only
certification that’s
peer-reviewed
and endorsed by
bear experts.To t e s t a co o l e r,
agency staff fill
it with food like
peanut butter, fish,
and meat, padlock
it shut, and place it
in a one-acre bear
enclosure until it’s
breached or sur-
vives 60 minutes
of biting, clawing,
and pounding. The
center currently
has a “team” of
seven bears that
had been nuisance
animals removed
from the wild, or
orphaned cubs of
nuisance bears.Scott Jackson,
the National Car-
nivore Program
Leader for the U.S.
Forest Service,
emphasizes that
even coolers rated
as bear-resistant
still need to be
padlocked or
bolted shut to keep
animals out. “Griz-
zly bears are veryintelligent, strong,
and dexterous and
can manipulate
containers in many
ways,” he says. “I
would assert that,
given enough time,
a grizzly bear could
access most any
container that is
not made of heavy-
gauge metal.”
—Paige SzmodisThe Yeti Tundra
45 ($300) holds
28 beers and
enough ice to
keep them cold
over a summer
weekend.September 2019 81