Built from real work, real trips, and a problem that needed a better answer.

Where FLAMECOOL came from

Founder Travis Esliger comes from a blue-collar background. His working life has included fishing, gold mining, and diamond drilling — jobs that mean long days, remote locations, unpredictable conditions, and learning to solve practical problems with the tools available. Outside of work, that same independent mindset carried into fishing trips, camping, prospecting, and time spent away from town.

One problem kept coming up: ice. A cooler works well until the ice melts. Then the trip gets interrupted by another drive into town, another bag of ice, another expense, and another reminder that cold storage is still tied to resupply. After enough excursions were broken up by those repeated ice runs, Travis decided there had to be a more practical way to keep a normal cooler cold off-grid.

That frustration became the starting point for FLAMECOOL: a compact refrigeration concept intended to turn compatible standard coolers into actively cooled systems without relying on a conventional electrical hookup. The goal has always been practical — build something useful for the same people who actually spend long days and nights away from easy access to power, stores, and infrastructure.

Two lifelong friends building it together

Travis is joined by his lifelong friend Jessie Tatlock, CEO of FLAMECOOL. Jessie also comes from a blue-collar background and has worked in gold mining. He is an avid camper and outdoorsman who understands first-hand the realities of hauling gear into remote places and depending on equipment that has to work when there is no convenient backup plan.

That shared background matters to how FLAMECOOL is being built. Travis and Jessie are not approaching the product as outsiders trying to imagine what campers, miners, anglers, hunters, prospectors, and remote workers might need. They come from that world themselves. The company is being shaped around durability, independence, simplicity, and practical value rather than unnecessary complexity.

What we are building

FLAMECOOL is focused on portable off-grid refrigeration for people who want more freedom from ice runs, generators, large battery systems, and fixed electrical infrastructure. The company is developing the product carefully, validating performance as the prototype evolves, and protecting the proprietary engineering that makes the system possible.

Our aim is straightforward: create equipment we would actually want to take into the bush, onto a worksite, on a fishing trip, into camp, or anywhere else where reliable refrigeration can make a difficult trip easier.