The Cooler That Became a Warm Suggestion

The Coleman 48-quart cooler is the Toyota Camry of coolers. Everyone has one. It's fine. It works. Until you take it to a Miami beach in July, where the ambient temperature is roughly the surface of the sun.

I packed the Coleman with ice, drinks, snacks, and fruit for my daughter. We got to the beach at 10am. By noon, I opened it to grab a La Croix. The La Croix was warm. Not cool. Not even room temperature. Warm. The ice had fully surrendered to South Florida.

I was sitting on Miami Beach, one of the most expensive stretches of sand in America, drinking a warm grapefruit La Croix. Like a peasant. My daughter wanted cold watermelon. I gave her room-temperature watermelon soup.

The RTIC 45 is a rotomolded cooler — same construction as YETI but literally half the price. It keeps ice for five days. FIVE DAYS. That's longer than most of my investment theses last before I start second-guessing them. You could pack ice on Monday and still have ice on Friday.

I spent $35 on a cooler and got exactly $35 worth of cooling: approximately four hours. In Miami, if your cooler can't hold ice past noon, it's just a large plastic box. And I already have plenty of those.