••• Mr.Smoke's Styrke Tool Box Journey •••

I have decided to create this thread for others to be able to reference when looking up the Styrke brand tool boxes and wanting some "first hand experience" regarding them. At the time of writing this, not much is out there aside from FB comments/reviews from customers. Due to the small amount of info out there, I wanted to create a comprehensive overview of my entire experience dealing with Styrke Industries and one of their reps who is local to me. I had made a thread a few days ago, before deciding on the Styrke box, which can be found here if you're interested to get a little back story and see what other boxes I had Styrke up against when shopping around.

The Styrke website can be found here and the website for my local rep is here. Both sites contain nice pictures showcasing the boxes and colour customization options, their add-ons (lockers and hutches) as well as specs and info. At the time of writing this Styrke informed me there is some outdated info for specs on the website. Mainly being the caster rating which is 1,000lbs each not the mentioned 600lbs. I took some limited pictures of the demo box I viewed (here) that was more focused on areas of the box not easily (or at all) seen by their showcasing pictures.

Here in Canada, just as in America, we love supporting companies and products from our respective countries. This was a huge plus for Styrke in my book, but made in Canada wasn't a deal breaker for me, but made in China sure was. I really only wanted Canada or USA built and some of the good US options aren't easily obtained here.

For those who don't know the Styrke name (which I expect to be most folks) and haven't read their website, I will fill in some blanks. Firstly, I found out it is pronounced "Sterk" as I had to inquire lol. They are a very small Canadian company, only a few employees. Founded by mechanics who were tired of paying crazy amounts of money for the "tool truck" brand boxes. They decided to do something about it and started making comparable/equal/superior quality boxes at a fraction of the price. Due to still being such a small company (but growing quickly and steadily) and only being in business for a handful of years they can't produce and stock massive amounts of boxes. They sub-contract the robotic welding and powder coating processes so that plays a factor into production limitations too. It seems they make only a few different colours in each batch to help keep costs down, so preferred colour selection may be difficult at times. I got lucky and my colour choice of green is part of the current batch. Hopefully as the company continues to grow they can ramp up their production numbers to maintain some "common" colours in stock at times without sacrificing quality. He said as of right now they are struggling to keep up with orders but looking at ways to overcome that.

Currently, as of Feb. 16/21 Styrke has no stock and pre-orders are being taken (25% minimum deposit) on their next batch of about 60 boxes. Green, black (and I believe) purple are the colours being made this time. Over half the pre-orders are spoken for at this point and I wouldn't be surprised if they are all gone before production of them is completed. They are expected to ship late April/early May which is almost 2 months away. Pre-orders must be paid in full before being shipped when buying through my local rep, not sure about boxes purchased directly from Styrke. They may offer financing but my rep does not as his business is only ~6 months old and companies wanted more "substance" from a business to offer financing through them.

My conversation on FB with Bob at Styrke was great!! He responded initially within a day and at least once or twice within 24hrs after every other question I sent to him. Every response exactly answered my question and often gave more detail than needed/requested. After I made my deposit with the the local rep I moved all correspondence to the rep for the sake of organization and streamlining. Easier for everyone that way. I had a big special request for before the coating process if possible (more on that later) and Bob seemed confident that my request could be accomodated which made me very happy. I'm still waiting to hear back an official word from my rep regarding this major request, but I have high hopes. I had some other smaller requests as well, all of which Bob was more than happy to accomodate. It is very apparent that he cares about his customers and wants to do what makes them happy. It's great to find and support a small company making a product at home.

Styrke only has a few reps, all in Canada but they do sell into the US as well. Dealing with Justin, the local rep (he lives literally 10 minutes from me, lucky!) was a great experience as well. Turns out I went to high school with his part-time employer, who owns a Styrke 36" cart and loves it. All 3 of us work as techs in the commercial vehicle (class 7/8 trucks) industry too which is uncanny I think. My first viewing of a box with Justin was great as I could compare the last build and the current batch that is underway. The older box was his personal one with about a year of daily use and he also had a brand new demo model. Having that used/new comparison was great. I'm glad that's all out of the way...... I hope you're still with me.



Now, let's get on to some good stuff!

Let's start this part off with a picture here of the box I am moving out of, don't mind the mess lol. Sorry it's a link instead of a displayed image as I'm writing all of this on my phone and couldn't manage to get working. That is my 13 drawer 40" S-O Heritage series that I bought used for $750CDN about 6 years ago with a used $70 International side cabinet. It has served me well, but I have outgrown it and have numerous large & expensive tools it cannot

This is an example photo I pulled from the Styrke website to show what I decided on for colour. It will go well with the green S-O stuff I have already and what I will still inevitably purchase.



I will change that to a picture of my actual box once it arrives. Mine will not have the hutch as I opted for just the cabinet itself. I plan to have my handles coated with Line-X locally after delivery of the box, which will accent it very nicely I think as show in this demo photo from Styrke. I opted for locally coating the handles in the event the coating fails and I also prefer Line-X over Rhino which is what Styrke currently uses.



They offer a wide range of colour combination possibilities for anyone who has a certain "must have" colour combo criteria. You can even have drawers be different colours than one another and different colour handles on drawers. Pretty cool options to give the customers I think. I really wanted a green box, but it wasn't a necessity. My biggest concern was having a well constructed product at a sensible price, while ensuring I get the most space and value for my money A product made here or in the US followed next. The only other big factor was drawer depth. Styrke ticked all those boxes for me like no other. The colour choice was a bonus as well as the huge amount of additional space. I was looking in the 53" to 55" range mostly and none of the candidates were as tall or as deep as this, costing hundreds or thousands more!!!!

Now that I know I have a bigger box on the way, I'm gonna need more tools to try fill it. I have been steadily replacing older, worn tools lately as well as buying new stuff so hopefully I can have SOMETHING in every drawer at some point. My current box has been needing organizing for a while and I recently straightened it up a lot but didn't gain much space and I knew I wouldn't. With the new box, I have time to plan out my organization since it's almost 2 months out. I have spent a good bit of time over the past few days getting started on that, which will be part of the post below which I will hopefully put together tomorrow.

I want to try and document all my experiences along the way.... my initial experiences with Bob and Justin, info about my custom request during production (this will be covered in the next post), my organization planning and execution, taking delivery, settling in and periodic reviews on durability and any issues that may arise. Essentially my diary of this entire journey and my thoughts through it all.

Don't worry, there's gonna be LOTS more to come!!!

ORGANIZATION​

As mentioned in the above post, I had a very special request for Styrke in regards to my box so I may as well open this section by giving a full explination as it is somewhat related to my organization.

The fact they are still in the production phase of the current batch was a bonus since hopefully I can have this unique customization done before my box would get powder coated. Standard production of these boxes is missing something which I'd really like to have, which is power available inside the box for charging my cordless batteries, magnetic light, phone and anything else I may need to plug in. I needed to come up with a solution that would be as sleek and "factory" looking as possible since I am very particular about certain things. Doing something that is just "good enough" wasn't going to cut it. I looked at things like strain relief connectors and even briefly contemplated a simple hole in the bottom of the box with a grommet.

What I ended up deciding on is something much, much better. I found a flush mount (and waterproof) male receptacle on Amazon made by NOCO (I have a couple of their battery maintainers) but I needed a second look at the box to ensure there was sufficient space within the structure of the box to accomodate. Here is a pic of what I will be mounting to the box after it's delivered to me.



Luckily Justin (Styrke's rep I'm buying through) lives close by and had no issues letting me come by again. After some careful measuring on the demo box I was able to locate what I felt to be a suitable place to request a hole to be made. I prefer for this to be done prior to my box getting coated so there would be no bare steel aside from where I make holes for machine screws/stove bolts for mounting. I drew up a basic template to send Justin so he could forward the info (along with other minor requests) to Bob at Styrke so he would know exactly where, and what size to make the hole. I will add that image to the bottom as an attachment so there aren't tons of big images in this post, although I'm sure there will be lots to come yet. Just as a reference for where I plan to have it.

It will end up being on the left side near the back of the box, just above the drawer slide (located at the bottom of the drawer) for the second drawer from the bottom. I picked this spot as I want to have my Snap-On battery charger, etc in the bottom left drawer and it seemed that it will be the best spot to leave sufficient space for cord management. Bob said he will do everything he can to accomodate this happening for me before PC'ing but he could not say for certain at this point until he checks with the coating company about their progress status. It may result in me needing to make the hole myself after taking delivery of the box, but with any luck I won't have to go through the nerve racking process of cutting a hole in my brand new $4700 box! Have to just wait to hear back at this point.

This isn't how I initially wanted to open this section but I ran out of time last night to include a detailed explination of this in my initial post.



As mentioned, this box is far bigger than I need to house my current (and ordered but not yet received) selection of tools for my line of work. With that being said, many of the drawers will not need much, or anything in terms of organizing until my tool collection grows by a big margin. There are however a few key drawers that I want to have optimized/suited to my needs but also be adaptable for future purchases.

Might as well start from the beginning. In order to get a good (but rough) idea of how I would organize my important drawers I needed to know their sizes. When I went to meet Justin initially and check out the box I brought along a notebook and quickly sketched out the box so I could record the inside drawer measurements, as those are crucial. Later on I calculated how much drawer liner material I will need if I decide I don't like the included foam liners. They would get swapped for the wide ribbed ⅛" rubber matting from Rubber-Cal. I also assigned each drawer a number for planning out designation. Here is the sketch I did followed by my list of drawer designations.



Drawer List
#1• Ratchets, breaker bars, torque wrench, sockets/bits, hex bits, adapters, swivels, extensions.
#2• Wrenches (pipe wrenches and adjustables too, space permitting)
#3• Pry bars, heel bars, wrecking bars, forks, lineup bars
#4• Vise Grips (I have a good amount and should occupy most of the drawer) and one of the 16x11 Ernst trays I have
#5• Air & cordless tools
#6• ______
#7• Blow molded cases, both empty and full ones
#8• Various reference paperwork and another Ernst tray with pens/markers/knives/odds n ends/etc.
#9• ______
#10• Welding helmet, respirator, ear muffs, face shield, work/winter gloves, winter hat (smaller items likely to go in #9)
#11• Hammers
#12• Punches/chisels, air hammer bits, drill bits, die grinder accessories, etc.
#13• Pliers, butane torch, solder, dielectric grease, etc
#14• Screwdrivers
#15• ______
#16• Cordless tool battery charger, rechargable light, cans or lube/brake cleaner/butane/air tool oil/etc

As you can see, I will have multiple drawers totally vacant but that's okay. I have a lot of tools at home which I don't need here that will go to work and I will still have room to grow. There are other various small storage trays/bins I have and some odd tools not covered in the list but they won't take much space. I was focusing on the bulk of things as well as most commonly used tools and will deal with all the smaller stuff later on.

Now it was time to start planning out a configuration for the top socket/ratchet/etc drawer. I started with this drawer for numerous reasons, but mostly because it will be the most frequently used and likely almost full. Between what I currently have, things on order and a couple small items I need at some point I was able to compile a very comprehensive list of everything that's planned to go in this drawer. I then broke down socket and bit socket sets to determine how I would want to organize them on rails/trays. Then was determining the sizes of the rails and figuring out if I had enough room left for everything else besides just sockets! I took a page out of my mothers book for this one and grabbed myself some grid paper....

I started the painstaking process of cutting out scaled versions of the set of socket trays I already have, along with the Ernst rails I decided on for stuff that was coming. Once I had those made I drew out the drawer footprint to the same scale so I could play with different configurations. My mom used to do this with our furniture when we would move (which was almost yearly) to a new place. Made it easy for deciding where stuff would go and how well things would fit. After spending more time than I'd care to admit I believe I finally came up with a configuration that will work for me. Below is my scaled grid paper project with my most liked layout yet. Below that is a picture of the top drawer in my current box, taken today.





Yet to be added to the collection and put in the top drawer of the Styrke box is; 84pc Sunex ⅜" master impact bit set I have on order; my ½" SAE shallow/deep impact sockets; 3 more ratchets on order in a GearWrench kit that will also replace all current chrome sockets and the swivels/adapters/extensions/etc in that kit. Arranging things the way shown on the grid paper allows me to keep all trays going left to right VS front to back which I really wanted. I may need to trim one handle/tab from the ends of the Ernst trays but I can live with that. This left me the most available room across the front of the drawer for all my ratchets, extensions, breaker bars, torque wrenches, etc.

My initial plan was to contract a friend of mine who owns a 3D printer to have custom made trays/holders made for keeping each item in a designated spot. A huge draw to this for me was the ability to pick my colour filament and I found a nice bright green that would match the box and my Snap-On stuff very well. I started brainstorming various ways of making pieces as well as looking on file sharing sites like thingiverse. I would want a customizable, adaptable and modular system so I could change things as needed when new tools get added to the collection. Again, I spent more time on this than I care to admit and had some really good foundation work put in with solid ideas on how to achieve this. I'm not going to go into specifics on it at this point as I'm almost certain that idea will get scrapped since I came along an alternative solution. This is when I discovered the Tool Grid system.

For those who don't know about it, google will yield plenty of YT videos showcasing the system. Apparently it was exclusive to Matco for a while but there are other retailers like Obsessed Garage and. Cromwell. I found it in a tool catalogue we have here in Canada called G2S, which my employer is a reseller for. I did some digging and decided to see how much this would cost me as it would work perfect for all the other items in my top drawer. I can get a 16" x 26" board (which I will need to cut to 15") with all the screws and holder pieces I need for about $100 Canadian which I felt to be reasonable. Going the custom 3D printed route would likely cost me more after buying filament and compensating my friend for his time, but I may get him to make me green holder pieces! Since I don't currently have all the ratchets/extensions/etc that I plan to put on the board I can't do a test run yet to see if everything will fit, but I am optimistic it will. Once my GearWrench set comes in that will be a priority but the kit is on B/O and not expected for 3-5 weeks yet. I have the fully custom 3D printed idea as a backup if the Tool Grid system won't suffice.

Next up for organization planning is my wrench drawer which will be for another time. There will likely be custom racks being 3D printed for this as I can't seem to find anything I like readily available. The Ernst low profile wrench racks are my most liked option available for purchase, but they don't have enough spots on the rail for my sets that go up to 1¼". Still brainstorming on this one yet but chances are I will have a similar style to the Ernst ones made by my friend that will be modular as I'm sure my wrench collection will continue to grow.

Reserved - Delivery/First Impressions

Reserved - Periodic Reviews

Reserved 1

Reserved 2

Reserved 3

Reserved 4

Reserved 5

They should have talked to a brand manager/marketing specialist before they picked their company name. The correct pronunciation may be "sterk" but you and I both know that everyone is just going to call them "strike."

pwschuh said:

They should have talked to a brand manager/marketing specialist before they picked their company name. The correct pronunciation may be "sterk" but you and I both know that everyone is just going to call them "strike."

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I must admit, I pondered on how to pronounce it for a couple days before I went to see the rep. He said it has something to do with a family name o the founder or something along those lines. The spelling and meaning have sentiment which made it make sense I suppose. I do agree though, nobody will pronounce it correctly until they know how, and even then.....

Not to mention there are numerous other companies/products using that name. Total dud..... a cool name/logo will sell **** product (not that theirs is ****).

Stryke out.

That's a great looking box. I'll be interested to see this filled out. Good luck!

slowtwitch73 said:

Not to mention there are numerous other companies/products using that name. Total dud..... a cool name/logo will sell **** product (not that theirs is ****).

Stryke out.

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Yeah I think the name could have been better, but in the end I didn't care about the name on it. I cared it was a good product at a fair price which this is. Hopefully the name doesn't hold them back at all.

KSJeff said:

That's a great looking box. I'll be interested to see this filled out. Good luck!

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I thought so as well. Not only does it look good, but the build quality seems to be right up there with boxes costing twice as much or more.

It will take some time, but I will get those reserved spots all filled in eventually. Hoping to take up some more of that space tonight if time allows it.

I do like the 72" chest, 200lbs heavier than the us g I just bought but I haven't found any us dealers, I would have liked to look at them. I like the idea of buying from a small home grown co, I do like the anticipation of waiting, time to scheme the next move.

Renegade1LI said:

I do like the 72" chest, 200lbs heavier than the us g I just bought but I haven't found any us dealers, I would have liked to look at them. I like the idea of buying from a small home grown co, I do like the anticipation of waiting, time to scheme the next move.

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Nice to see you drop in!

Being able to physically examine a purchase of this cost is so incredibly important for me, as I'm sure it is for many others. That played a big factor in me eliminating the Extreme RX Pro Series and Rousseau boxes from consideration. A Rousseau box I could have seen in person (once our lockdown is lifted and stores are able to have customers inside) eventually but I may have needed to wait a while. The Extreme RX Pro I could have ordered and returned if I didn't like it but would have had to pay freight charges both ways at around $500 total. No way was I setting myself up to be out $500 and have nothing to show for it. I also found out the RX Pro has shallower drawers than my "must have" criteria mandated.

Actually, very few boxes in my price range offered a true 2" inside height on the shallow drawers which Styrke delivers on coming in at nearly 2¼" of usable height before contacting the drawer above it. That one detail was a HUGE factor for me due to how I want my wrenches stored which will require just over 2" of inside height from the drawer surface to the drawer above it. I did not want to stand them vertically in a 3, 4 or 5" tall drawer and laying them all flat in a drawer would take up far too much space. I have two sets of standard length SAE up to 1¼ and another set up to 15/16, two stubby sets of SAE up to 15/16, two standard length metric sets up to 22mm and a single set of metric stubby up to 19mm. That's just what I have a work, with almost just as many at home.

The waiting is allowing me to explore lots of organization possibilities and I have a bunch of things planned which seem to suit me best. I will be going into specific detail tomorrow in my ORGANIZATION section up above (post #2) which is something I can't wait to have come to fruition. I can't remember the last time I had anticipation and excitement like this over tools/boxes, but I like it!

My replies tend to be quite lengthy.... sorry about that lol.

I once heard my wife telling her girl friends, "he's not out chasing women, comes right home, but he loves tools & working, you would think it's s when he gets stuff delivered" I think it was meant as a compliment? I know how you feel.

I've updated post #2 which brings me up to current with where I'm at on my tool organization planning process.

Looks pretty damn cool from Kansas. Can’t wait to see the finished product.

Smoke - really like what you are doing / posting. Thanks!

Kscardsfan said:

Looks pretty damn cool from Kansas. Can’t wait to see the finished product.

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Thanks Cards Fan! I'm really looking forward to the finished product, but also everything else along the way too.

orangeblood said:

Smoke - really like what you are doing / posting. Thanks!

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I apprecaite that orange blood. I like making big threads documenting my progress on things. Had a similar thread a number of years ago documenting a car I customized/modified. This one seems like it will be much more detailed though!

Any update Mr Smoke?

ive said:

Any update Mr Smoke?

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I've been trying to find the time to put together a proper post, but yes there is news to report.

My box was dropped off a couple days ago, on Monday afternoon. I was pressed for time so just kinda threw everything in and have been organizing little by little yesterday and today. Still have lots to do!!

I'm hoping to get some updates added to the first post within the next couple of days. For now, I've attached a pic I snapped quickly yesterday.

Congrats Mr Smoke. I look forward to your detailed review.

Following with envy was looking at their site before searching here for a real world review

Figured I'd give somewhat of a quick update.

I haven't forgot about this thread and have been wanting to update but I just haven't been able to make the time. I'm hoping I can get some solid info added to the OP within the next week or so.