Allow me to introduce to you my generator:

Bought “second-hand” after Wilma from somebody who used it all of 8 hours and decided he wanted a whole house system. We paid $400 and IIRC, back then this baby was running well over the $500 mark. I am sure that after a decade, there are more efficient and cheaper generators out there and that only means one thing: Somebody wants to get rid of his and you can get it for even less.

Go through your Wish List of things you want for the next hurricane or natural disaster and then start combing the local selling exchanges online. Get what you can and store it properly. Make a generator top on your list because they do come handy. We had a fridge and a freezer full with food bought before the hurricane was a threat and nothing was spoiled; that alone paid for the $400. And the additional bonus was to run the fans to fend off the mortal heat we had inside the house. Kid you nor, it reached 91 degrees.

PS: The white stuff on the tires is Loctite insulating foam. You see, the tires were not solid and the rubber cracked after many years of faithful service. It is a pain in the butt to drag that thing on flats, so I found out some videos in YouTube that showed how to convert them into solid tires by using insulating foam. I used Loctite rather than Great Stuff because the product dries bigger and denser… which led to some excess pouring out from locations I did not make sure were properly covered. Really, you don’t want to see them tires before I installed them back.  And they are not perfectly round, but then again I am not planning on entering the generator into a NASCAR race, just need to drag it in and out storage and that is good enough.