Longtime Yeti customers may remember a small hard cooler called the Roadie 15. Discontinued now for well over a decade, the rare cooler has become the stuff of legend within Yeti Nation.
On forums, the Roadie 15 has been dubbed a “unicorn,” though some collectors refer to it by another name, the Cyclops, due to its unique position in the pantheon of Yeti products. To this day, the original Roadie 15 remains Yeti’s only hard cooler design with single-latch enclosure.
To this day, the original Roadie 15 remains Yeti’s only hard cooler design with single-latch enclosure.
For those left longing, here is the good news: the Roadie 15 is back, Gear Patrol can exclusively report. In spirit, at least.
Because if you ask the director of product management Chris Welch, who oversees hard cooler design at Yeti, the new Roadie 15 shares little more than a name with its predecessor. And you only need to notice the two latches on the front to understand that the new Roadie 15 is a different beast entirely.
“A wholly new approach”
“The name is probably more of an Easter egg,” Welch told Gear Patrol. “People who have been around the brand a while will acknowledge and appreciate that. But we didn’t take on this project and say, ‘Let’s refresh the Roadie 15.’ It’s a wholly new approach to a personal hard cooler.”
In other words, the new Roadie 15 packs an additional decade of R&D and customer feedback into its design. The result? A hard cooler that may be the most versatile design in the company’s 18-year history.
What’s more, the Roadie 15 now represents the most affordable hard cooler in Yeti’s entire catalog, lowering entry point to purchase one of the brand’s signature offerings.
YetiYeti Roadie 15
Portability and flexibility
The Tundra may be Yeti’s iconic hard cooler but the brand has spent the last few years doubling down on the design’s more agile cousin, the Roadie.
As the name suggests, Roadies are designed around “portability and mobility,” Welch said. And nowhere are those principles more clearly distilled than on the smallest of the bunch, the new Roadie 15.
The cooler features a strap akin to that found on the next size up, the Roadie 24, however, a few simple tweaks make this one better suited to all-around use.
Called the DoubleDuty Strap, it offers multiple carry options —single-hand or crossbody. Yeti also integrated a quick-release system to remove the strap altogether, making it easier to mount the cooler on, say, a paddleboard or the back of an ATV.
“In the 15, we really prioritized the carry experience, while also focusing on small-vehicle compatibility,” Welch said.
Finally, Yeti gave the Roadie 15 a drain plug based on customer feedback stemming from the Roadie 24. It gives users the option to drain the water in the middle of an activity to lessen the load.
“When you’re at the furthest point out on a pursuit, you’re no longer concerned about ice retention,” Welch said. “The ability to remove melted ice and drop the weight was something that we wanted to enable on this cooler.”
Quick-access and rigidity
Of course, if portability is the name of the game, why would you choose the Roadie 15 over one of Yeti’s softer, lighter coolers like the Hopper Flip?
“That’s a good question and a fair question,” said Welch, who has equally good answers. And they pertain to the Roadie 15’s unique attributes, as well as characteristics inherent to its injection-molded design.
For starters, the aforementioned drain plug ins’t present on the Hopper Flip — or really any soft cooler design out there, Welch said.
Also, the Hopper Flips’s zipper, a necessity to maintain thermal performance, is fussy, requiring two hands to open. “It’s not something that is easy to get in and out of,” Welch added.
The Roadie 15, meanwhile, features Yeti’s propriety QuickLatch System, which gives users quick, one-hand access. “You can have it behind the driver’s seat [of your car] and quickly get in,” Welch said.
As for the contents, the Roadie 15 can fit a 12-pack of cans with ice or multiple wine bottles lying down. Furthermore, it can accommodate two dry baskets for extra organization.
