Did you/do you have one of these? WHY?

I remember a couple of mates at school's families had chest freezers. You'd go round their house for tea and they'd have to go out to the garage (they were always in the garage - lit by a bare bulb, surrounded by rusty tools) where they'd heave it open a grasp for a pack of Birdseye beef burgers sat atop a pile of - what? What was in there? Even for a large family, there is no need for that much sub-zero storage space. Especially all these people had fridge-freezers in the their kitchen too. The only people who need chest freezers are serial killers who need a space to store dismembered torsos (hence the name). So what are they for? Do they still exist? Every so often someone on Come Dine With Me will have one and I'll immediately mark them down as unspeakably sinister.