When summer season approaches, you may venture yourself to make that long trip that you have been waiting to do. It’s also a time when you need to be ready for emergencies on the road in unfamiliar or remote places. Instead of using your car’s trunk as a free storage unit, clear out the junk and replace it with this comprehensive list of gear that will prep you for almost anything.
- Jumper cables or a portable battery pack made for cars: The former never needs charging, but the latter frees you of having to find a Good Samaritan.
- A quart of oil and bottle of coolant: Honestly, if you drive a late model car you’ll probably never need these on the road but if your car is 10 or more years old, pack them.
- A fire extinguisher: Get the dry type, rated A-B-C, to cover almost any kind of fire in or around your car.
- Roadside indicators: This used to mean smoky, sulfur-smelling flares but today you should look into folding reflective triangles or flashing LED light pucks.
- Flashlight: Ideally, one with no batteries. Get a rechargeable LED flashlight that lives in a charging mount. Bonus points: A headlight for your head, which is real handy when both hands are busy fixing something in the dark.
- A tool kit: Even if you don’t know what to do with it, a kindly stranger might.
- Duct tape: Everything you’ve heard about it, short of neurosurgery, is true.
- A ready spare tire: If your car has a spare, make sure it’s not flat. If your car uses a slime & inflator kit instead, make sure the slime hasn’t expired. And if your car has run-flat tires, you’re all set.
- First aid kit: Spend the $25 to get a good one, not the silly one you got for free at the office CPR training fair. And carry a tourniquet made from the rubber tube of that exercise band you never use. You may never need it, but when you do, you really do.
- High-vis windbreaker: Takes up almost no room, and you’ll thank me when you’re replacing a tire on the driver’s side in the rain at night.
- A thermal blanket: Do not count on running your car for heat.
- Pen and paper: Keep a set separate from the ones in your glove box, which always get lost.
- Energy bars and bottled water: Both will be gross after living in your trunk for years, but if you’re stranded for a long time you’ll devour them with relish.
