Hard to think of an equivalent expression: it's a sale where they sell you a carload full of stuff for not much money - so you can furnish your house for a small amount of money. In this case it's obviously on hire-purchase, so you make a down payment, haul the stuff away in your car, then pay (far more than it's worth or the displayed price in the shop) for it over a number of years for a small amount per year.

Named because you drive down and pick up all the stuff in your car, so not sure what else one should call it - it's not exactly bulk buy as you're not buying lots of iterations of the same thing.

This is the first time I hear the term "carload sales places," but the description sounds a lot like the "rent-to-own" shops that are popular in the United States. A really famous one is called Rent-A-Center:

http://www6.rentacenter.com/Rent-A-Center-Home.html

More about rent-to-own:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-to-own

I would not say that "rent-to-own" is necessarily the equivalent to "carload sales," but the concepts seem to be related: small down payments on home furnishings and protracted monthly payments that result in the customer paying much more than the real value of the goods over time. These shops mostly appear in poor neighborhoods and (to borrow Stephanie's terminology) have a "cheap/chintzy" feel to them.

I think this is similar to truck load or back of the truck sales. Here is a current reference:

Carload Sales in Columbus
Tuesday, 23 September 2008 11:40


McCarley's Trainload Sale, Columbus, Georgia

"TRAINLOAD SALES" have helped boost sales in Columbus recently as retailers used ads featuring trainload lots of various appliances. Kirven's had a big sale in July featuring a "Box Car Sale" with double page ads in local newspapers. Shown above is a picture used by McCarley Furniture Company showing appliances unloaded from a freight car. The Central handled the shipment.
http://www.cofg.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl...

The implication in your text is that this is cheap/chintzy merchandise that a retailer is selling that has arrived by rail boxcar just for this sale.





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Note added at 24 mins (2011-08-02 21:20:48 GMT)
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HERE'S a link to a 1926 furniture ad for its "carload sale"
http://www.newspaperarchive.com/SiteMap/FreePdfPreview.aspx?...


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Note added at 2 hrs (2011-08-02 23:06:03 GMT)
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HERE'S A LINK to a PDF of a 1958 US newspaper, The article is titled "Gunvilles Win Trip to Frisco." The owners of Gunville's Appliance and Furniture Store won a trip to San Francisco as a reward from General Electric for the fine showing made at the local store during the carload sale.
http://digitalcollections.mypubliclibrary.com/digital/11/774...

This would, I think, refer to a carload, meaning rail car load of appliances delivered to the store by General Electric -- at some type of discount --

In the 1950s most of this type of freight was delivered by rail. Today most of it moves by truck.

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Note added at 2 hrs (2011-08-02 23:07:49 GMT)
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If you google:

retail +"truckload sale" +furniture

You will be getting many examples of the current version of this type of retail discount marketing/sale.