I am looking for a small chest type freezer for my garage. Our freezer in the house gets filled easy and Id like to have one freezer to store additional meat in. Plus, it would be easier to hook a generator to than my fridge/ freezer combo. Any suggestions of a type or size to get?

A $50 used one off Facebook market place.

This^^^

The classics, while less efficient, seem to never die. While the new garbage is costly, dies quickly, but costs less to run.

Choose your poison, high running cost on a cheap investment or high investment and replacement cost with low running cost.

I ran the numbers 1 time on what my 1974 West Ward chest freezer costs to run and how much I would save to upgrade to a new energy star model. IIRC, the modern freezers would have to consistently last more than a decade of running life to pay off. I'll take my chances with the freezer that has been running flawlessly for almost half a century.

Whatever is on sale really, it's a pretty steady technology, my dad has one that is 40 years old and still works fine, although it would be making me a bit nervous now, it's old.

Regardless of what you get, order a cheap freezer alarm to go with it.

We have one that starts to blink and beep if the temperature gets above 30 degrees inside the freezer (it's normal operating temp is around -10), I change the battery each fall when I restock.

Keep in mind that almost all types of freezers are out of stock and back ordered right now

Yeah, nothing to be found anywhere.  I was thinking about buying a cheap one.
My logic being that the WiFi enabled, phone controlled bullshit would probably crap out long before the actual refrigeration, mechanical and electronics.

Bill

We have two extra freezers in our basement. One typical $150 chest freezer from Lowe's, the other a commercial stand-up type.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

The chest freezer holds cold air better. When you open the door, the air doesn't "fall out" like it does in the stand-up, so it doesnt take as long to re-cool the air once you open it. More efficient.

But the chest freezer is hard to organize. You forget about food on the bottom. You go digging around and you wind up messing up any organization you have. We've tried bins, everything, and its just tough to organize the contents in a good way.

What we've come up with is using the stand-up freezer for meats. One shelf for each type: beef, chicken, pork, seafood. Loaves of bread go in the door trays. We're about to use bins in each shelf b/c the steaks and stuff aren't stacking well, and slide around and fall when we try to get something out.

The chest freezer gets vegetables, ice creams, frozen dinners, any overflow from the upstairs "normal" freezer.

I use a shot glass with water frozen in it, with a quarter set on top so that I can tell if the temps get high while I'm gone, then refreeze.

I use pieces of carboard in my chest freezer, and put the different cuts into columns, all the burger I just stack up in a cardboard box on the short side over the compressor, it works pretty well.

Different strokes for different folks (aka, I'm posting another possible way to organize one).

I have these large gray bins. I know approximately what ratio we consume things. I just fill the bins in that ratio, chicken, beef, pork, frozen cheeses, frozen veggies etc. Then stack the bins. You don't ever have to dig much. Just pull from the top bins and remove them when empty. Dead space around bins gets overflow items. If we buy a beef, pig etc, we pickup enough other items to fill the empty bins back up in the ratio we consume. And anything that doesn't fit in the bins gets put aside in the dead spaces etc, standing by for the next time we refill bins.

We usually couple bin refilling into a once-a-year defrost so everything has to be taken out anyways. So we empty the freezer into coolers, defrost, then fill bins as we put it all back.

We have 2 chest freezers and we usually only defrost one at a time so I make it sound easy but it's a little more challenging with just one.