Keep your eye on the one at Home Depot, they always seem to have a dented or scratched one in stock that they mark down.

 Quote: Charlie Snyder

I also found something about not getting a freezer that has been turned off for more than a few weeks.

http://fridgedoctor.com

The site noted that modern freezers have the condensing coils soldered to the outside wall of the unit. When the freezer is turned off for extended periods -- more than a couple of weeks, condensation will form inside these walls and corrode the coils causing a leak.

Yep, this one still had some of their food in it, so it was never not in use. I paid for it and then picked it up a week later after they had gotten all packed.

I scored some frozen roasts since they could not pack those either...

As a side note, members of the American Legion may purchase appliances from Sears "Direct" warehouses at a dramatically lower price. Something for Veterans to consider.

Chuck,
We got a Maytag upright freezer from Home Depot for a VERY good price because it had dents in it. It's huge and we use it for our human food as well.

Lisa

I found a used appliance store. They had all the freezers plugged in and runnin' so you could see that they still worked.

I got a 20+ cu.ft. upright for $100. Runs like a champ.

We get all of our freezers at farm auctions for $10-$50.

We currently have 3 that are outside. We don't have any trouble with them because of ordinary weathering, other than the occasional wind storm that springs the lids.

Thanks Carol for the unplugged tip, that is always when ours quit in the past (after they had been unplugged for a while).

Use Craigslist. I got two freezers there for free. My old one was a 15 cubic foot one. The shelf layout sucks, so I can only fit just over 100 lbs of food in it. If I want to saw things up with the meat saw, I can start using the door area and the basket on the bottom of it.

I also have a 26 cubic foot commercial freezer from a restaurant that I got for nothing. It's all stainless, inside and out, goes to -40F, and could very likely fit over 200 lbs in it. The thing empty weighs 580 lbs.

If you get one, don't get a frost free model. The frost free units cycle off once or twice a day, thawing the surface of the food. The repeated thawing causes freezer burn. Probably doesn't matter for dog food, but I store steaks in it and I'm a brewer and I store yeast slants in it. The frost free ones will kill my yeast.

Basically, I don't thaw anything from the freezer when attempting to separate it into smaller chunks. I bought a hand meat saw for about $10 and just saw off 5-10 pound chunks of whatever it is I need. Then I take those chunks to the basement and throw them in a rubbermaid container filled with cold water for about 3 hours to thaw them sufficiently. I pull it out of there, weigh and measure 2 weeks worth of bowls and keep 4 days worth in the fridge at all times, and the rest go in the freezer. When I remove a bowl from the fridge, I replace it with a frozen one, and in 4 days it's sufficiently thawed to feed it.

In any case, go with craigslist. You can get one for free, and the really old manual defrost ones are just as efficient than the manual defrosts made today. But, the old ones are built way tougher. Notice you will never find a manual defrost unit that is Energy Star rated. They need to use that on/off defrost cycle to save energy, and it messes up your food.