Are you a new cookie mom or cookie dad for your daughter’s Girl Scout troop? Thank you for taking the time to help your daughter’s troop and taking some responsibilities off your volunteer leader’s plate!
If you are concerned about how to get started, first, attend your local service unit cookie training and read all your training materials. Reach out to your cookie manager for help.
But keep in mind these tips for staying on track and sane during cookie sales:
- Track religiously.
- Whether it’s a DIY spreadsheet or using your council cookie system, make sure you track from the beginning. Include a paper copy.
- Pad your due dates.
- Someone will bound to be sick or late.
- Make sure parents sign their paperwork holding them accountable for any cookies sold and the money.
- Count every case and box twice. And then a third time.
- Don’t allow individual sales at booths. It will just mess things up for later.
- If your council allows it, use a credit card reader to encourage sales.
- Make sure parents pay before they get additional cookie boxes or cases.
- Make a separate deposit for each girls’ cookie deposit. It may feel like more work but it makes things easier to track.
How many cases of cookies can fit in my vehicle?
Generally speaking, councils have historically recommended the following:
- Compact car – 30 -35 cases
- Standard car – 45 -50 cases
- Standard station wagon – 70 – 75 cases
- SUV/Mini van – 100 – 150 cases
- Standard pickup – 100 cases
- Standard van – 150 – 200 cases
That being said, leaders and cookie moms can get creative. These volunteers have reported on Facebook groups on being able to creatively squeeze these many cases into their vehicles.
| Vehicle | Cases (estimated) |
| Dodge Caravan/Honda Odyssey | 140 |
| Dodge Ram | 120 |
| Dodge Stratus | 55 |
| Escalade | 85 |
| Excursion | 120 |
| Expedition | 100 |
| F150 | 100 |
| Ford Escape | 83 |
| Jeep Cherokee | 70-100 |
| Kia Sarento | 115 |
| Lincoln Navigator | 90 |
| Mazda CX-9 | 90 |
| Passat | 75 |
| Prius | 75 |
| PT Cruiser | 100 |
| Santa Fe | 85-90 |
| Sienna | 150 |
| Town & Country | 180-200 |
| Toyota Sienna | 150 |
| Trailblazer | 65 |
| U-haul 10-foot | 400 |
| U-haul 12-foot | 500 |
Information provided by scout leaders and volunteers on Facebook.
Use Resources Wisely 
“Don’t allow individual sales at booths”… you only make that mistake once!
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I have one to add to the car capacity – fit 60 cases in a late model Chevy Impala (But it must be noted that only the driver’s seat wasn’t filled to the ceiling!)
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For a 2015 Toyota Sienna, if you are really motivated to get them packed in and don’t need to be able to see out the back, it would be possible to fit more than 200 cases. I just glanced at the chart the council sent out Friday morning before pick up, since I wasn’t cookie coordinator and didn’t have to plan. At a quick glance I thought it said a van with the seats taken out would hold 200 cases, which sounded right to me. But there was a different listing for “mini-van” that actually said a rather conservative 100 boxes for mini-van, which considering the wide variety of minivans out there makes sense.
When our third person couldn’t come help at the last minute I wasn’t too worried. We had two empty Toyota Sienna vans and 320 cases to pick up. My cookie coordinator was way more worried since she clearly had read council’s email more carefully, and hasn’t done as many pick ups. I’ve done a lot of pick ups at this point, so 200 sounded about right to me and as it turned out it was. The seats were taken out so it was totally flat in the van all the way up to the front seat.
We put about 8 cases in the front seat and we filled my Toyota Sienna up until there was just one row left to go up. Around 30 more cases could have gone in that last layer up. We could have both gone up higher and we could have put more in the front and still had my side mirrors visible. I stopped packing them in at 186 cases, when another person from our troop was able to get there and fill in for our third person at which point it seemed silly to stuff more in mine.
It was the early pick up day so they didn’t have the GS leader volunteers packing it, but paid Montgomery Ward employees who were sooooo not interested in what they were doing. I’ve never seen so many boxes dropped and heard so much complaining at a cookie pick up day, and I’ve worked several Cookie Mega Drops all day long. I’m fairly sure more cases could have fit if it had been leaders with experience packing the van too.
So while it isn’t exactly ideal since I couldn’t see out the back, you could fit a lot more into the Sienna than listed if you needed to. I only had a 5 minute drive, and all on small roads to get home since I live so close to the pick up location so packing it in wasn’t a big deal for me. I think we could have easily fit 220 cases into the Sienna if we had really needed to and as it was we had 186 in there with a lot of wiggle room. It was all of our Adventurefuls, Toast Yays, Lemonades, Trefoils, and Thin Mints so some different shapes of boxes as well. If they’d all been one variety that might have helped too.
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