Harbor Freight--US General brand history

[DadsTools]

Ive seen several references in this forum suggesting that US General was an existing toolbox company HF acquired. Yet a recent thread led to research indicating that no toolbox company by that name previously existed, nor could I find any record in the USPTO database that any company ever registered the US General trademark prior to HF registering it in 2002.

In the interest of either validating or putting to bed any GJ urban legends, does anyone have any hard evidence that a US General company that made toolboxes existed prior to HF's 2002 trademark registration?

Another question that came up was if anyone knew the name(s) that HF's toolboxes were branded with before its use of the US General brand?

If you've got any solid info on these, please share it!

 

[Strouty]

The US General company that existed before HF was started years back, they had all kinds of great ideas and products. They offered narrow 12" toolboxes that were 8' tall and 5' wide, but in the end it was that lawsuit over the PVC airline kit that really killed them.

 

[DadsTools]

The US General company that existed before HF was started years back, they had all kinds of great ideas and products. They offered narrow 12" toolboxes that were 8' tall and 5' wide, but in the end it was that lawsuit over the PVC airline kit that really killed them.

I believe you're speaking of the US General Supply Company that was a retail chain/mail order company based in NY?

 

[6PTsocket]

I remember shopping in the one in Hicksville, LI. It was a tool store but no house brand . I remember buying a Dremel there. They always made you fill out a name and address form for your purchases, which I thought was none of their business. Credit cards were not as widely used, then. I filled one out: M. Mouse, Disney World , FL and they took it. Home Depot or Lowes probably has pretty much the same stuff.

I believe you're speaking of the US General Supply Company that was a retail chain/mail order company based in NY?

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[L5wolvesf]

Hate to throw a wrench (pun intended) into this but . . .
It is possible the the "US General" name was not registered federally (USPTO) but still used.

 

[DadsTools]

I remember shopping in the one in Hicksville, LI. It was a tool store but no house brand . I remember buying a Dremel there. They always made you fill out a name and address form for your purchases, which I thought was none of their business. Credit cards were not as widely used, then. I filled one out: M. Mouse, Disney World , FL and they took it. Home Depot or Lowes probably has pretty much the same stuff.

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Sounds like the store chain I was thinking of, U.S. General Supply. The company often used just U.S. General in its copy as an abbreviation, but the word Supply was in the full name. For brevity's sake, let's use USGS for the retailer/mail order company and USG for the toolbox brand.

BTW, let's keep in mind that the purpose of this thread is to confirm or refute the 'rumor' that there was actually once a US General tool box manufacturer, and that HF acquired the rights to that company's trademark and other intellectual property.

Your mentioning the lack of house brands at USGS is very significant and an important observation. This is one of the factors that makes any hard connection between USGS and HF's USG that actually ties the two companies together in some way rather dubious. While it's known that USGS had a small selection of privately branded items, it's big marketing approach was that it carried nationally recognized brand names at discount prices. This approach can be found mentioned continuously in surviving USGS catalogs and magazine ads. Whereas the overwhelming majority of USGS products were brand name items, HF has focused on exclusive house brands for some time now. So there's nothing here that would strongly indicate that USGS was actually the original source of HF's USG toolboxes.

We would need to find two vital pieces of evidence to establish a connection between USGS toolboxes and HF's USG toolboxes:

1. That USGS was actually involved with manufacturing toolboxes.
2. That USGS sold toolboxes bearing the USG trademark.

 

[DadsTools]

Hate to throw a wrench (pun intended) into this but . . .
It is possible the the "US General" name was not registered federally (USPTO) but still used.

Doesn't throw a wrench into it at all. This is an important consideration.

Let's say there was some mfr that used the USG brand on its products but never bothered to register it. This would be highly unusual, since any mfr trying to build brand recognition would want to protect it's trademark.

But let's say for argument's sake that it never bothered to register that trademark with the USPTO. Remember....the 'rumor' states that HF acquired a USG toolbox company. But, if there was no registered trademark, there was no intellectual property to buy out!!! The name would have been unclaimed, and therefore free for anyone to take, register and use. Why would anyone pay money for something they can legally have free and clear for nothing--especially a company like HF? HF couldn't have bought the name from another company because, without being registered, there would be nothing to buy!

Let's think about the mfg facilities. If USG were a US-based mfg facility, why would HF buy that, when everything they have made is from overseas to get the cheapest price? If USGS was getting its boxes made overseas (and that's a BIG "if" since we still have no evidence USGS ever sold USG-branded boxes), they would have been made for them under contract by an overseas mfr. Would HF buy out the overseas toolbox mfr just to get the name? There's no evidence that HF ever owned its own mfg facilities anywhere. Everything is made for them. Why would they invest in an overseas mfr having nothing directly to do with a USG brand name from a USGS company that had been out of business for nearly ten years just to make toolboxs?

We still have no hard evidence that there was an actual mfr making toolboxes with a USG brand name prior to HF registering the brand in 2002, or that HF actually acquired such intellectual property, nor any other previous company's assets, that directly relate to its USG toolboxes.

 

[DFB]

I remember shopping in the one in Hicksville, LI. It was a tool store but no house brand . I remember buying a Dremel there. They always made you fill out a name and address form for your purchases, which I thought was none of their business. Credit cards were not as widely used, then. I filled one out: M. Mouse, Disney World , FL and they took it. Home Depot or Lowes probably has pretty much the same stuff.

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[L5wolvesf]

Doesn't throw a wrench into it at all. This is an important consideration.

Let's say there was some mfr that used the USG brand on its products but never bothered to register it. This would be highly unusual, since any mfr trying to build brand recognition would want to protect it's trademark.

But let's say for argument's sake that it never bothered to register that trademark with the USPTO. Remember....the 'rumor' states that HF acquired a USG toolbox company. But, if there was no registered trademark, there was no intellectual property to buy out!!! The name would have been unclaimed, and therefore free for anyone to take, register and use. Why would anyone pay money for something they can legally have free and clear for nothing--especially a company like HF? HF couldn't have bought the name from another company because, without being registered, there would be nothing to buy!

Let's think about the mfg facilities. If USG were a US-based mfg facility, why would HF buy that, when everything they have made is from overseas to get the cheapest price? If USGS was getting its boxes made overseas (and that's a BIG "if" since we still have no evidence USGS ever sold USG-branded boxes), they would have been made for them under contract by an overseas mfr. Would HF buy out the overseas toolbox mfr just to get the name? There's no evidence that HF ever owned its own mfg facilities anywhere. Everything is made for them. Why would they invest in an overseas mfr having nothing directly to do with a USG brand name from a USGS company that had been out of business for nearly ten years just to make toolboxs?

We still have no hard evidence that there was an actual mfr making toolboxes with a USG brand name prior to HF registering the brand in 2002, or that HF actually acquired such intellectual property, nor any other previous company's assets, that directly relate to its USG toolboxes.

I stopped reading the prior post re HF etc early on because of the back and forth. I don't know if there actually was any historic info on USG made available there. So I did a quick search and found essentially nothing - almost like USG didn't exist until HF "bought" it/them/whatever. I know that name, in some form, existed long ago because I had a few of their items - possibly a jack.

I mentioned no federal trade name specifically because it could have just been a regional / state thing at first. Not registering a trade name is not unusual. Occasionally I have to look up trade names and come across where a registered name is also being used by another unrelated entity.

Without any verifiable history the USG thing seems to be at a dead end.

 

[DadsTools]

I stopped reading the prior post re HF etc early on because of the back and forth. I don't know if there actually was any historic info on USG made available there. So I did a quick search and found essentially nothing - almost like USG didn't exist until HF "bought" it/them/whatever. I know that name, in some form, existed long ago because I had a few of their items - possibly a jack.

I mentioned no federal trade name specifically because it could have just been a regional / state thing at first. Not registering a trade name is not unusual. Occasionally I have to look up trade names and come across where a registered name is also being used by another unrelated entity.

Without any verifiable history the USG thing seems to be at a dead end.

It certainly is beginning to look like a dead end.

And I agree it's not all that unusual for a sales company such as a mail order or local/regional retailer not to register a trademark with USPTO. This appears to be the case with USGS. My only point was that without such a registration, there would be no brand name that a company like HF would have to buy in an acquisition--the name would be free for anyone to register and use.

The whole point of this thread was to see if anyone could confirm with any kind of evidence the rumor that HF bought out a US General toolbox company, or any so-named business for that matter. So far it looks like this notion is nothing but a myth--there's no evidence that any such toolbox company ever existed prior to HF registering the trademark in 2002. There was a US General Supply company that went belly-up in the early 1990s, but there's no evidence that HF had any connection with it whatsoever. So far, no reference to any other similarly named company or brand can be found that would be a candidate for this alleged HF buyout. Unless any new evidence surfaces, we'd have to conclude that the US General toolbox brand originated with HF back in 2002 and had nothing to do with the buyout of any pre-existing company or trade name.

The other question still remains: does anyone know what toolbox brand(s) HF sold (if any) prior to its US General?

 

[6PTsocket]

It certainly is beginning to look like a dead end.

And I agree it's not all that unusual for a sales company such as a mail order or local/regional retailer not to register a trademark with USPTO. This appears to be the case with USGS. My only point was that without such a registration, there would be no brand name that a company like HF would have to buy in an acquisition--the name would be free for anyone to register and use.

The whole point of this thread was to see if anyone could confirm with any kind of evidence the rumor that HF bought out a US General toolbox company, or any so-named business for that matter. So far it looks like this notion is nothing but a myth--there's no evidence that any such toolbox company ever existed prior to HF registering the trademark in 2002. There was a US General Supply company that went belly-up in the early 1990s, but there's no evidence that HF had any connection with it whatsoever. So far, no reference to any other similarly named company or brand can be found that would be a candidate for this alleged HF buyout. Unless any new evidence surfaces, we'd have to conclude that the US General toolbox brand originated with HF back in 2002 and had nothing to do with the buyout of any pre-existing company or trade name.

The other question still remains: does anyone know what toolbox brand(s) HF sold (if any) prior to its US General?

I always assumed that US General was just another HF house brand for boxes made in China. I found a line of Chinese boxes that looked pretty sumilar and might br the source but was unable to find it again for this thread and I could be all wrong as a lot of Chinese companies mske similar stuff.

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[jlwulf54]

Ive seen several references in this forum suggesting that US General was an existing toolbox company HF acquired. Yet a recent thread led to research indicating that no toolbox company by that name previously existed, nor could I find any record in the USPTO database that any company ever registered the US General trademark prior to HF registering it in 2002.

In the interest of either validating or putting to bed any GJ urban legends, does anyone have any hard evidence that a US General company that made toolboxes existed prior to HF's 2002 trademark registration?

Another question that came up was if anyone knew the name(s) that HF's toolboxes were branded with before its use of the US General brand?

If you've got any solid info on these, please share it!

A little late to the party, but I can give some dstails regarding the history of USGS. The company was founded in the 1950's by two brothers as a mail order supplier of tools and hard-to-find hardware. I believe it was in the early 1970's that they opened a retail store in Hicksville, NY as a hardware / garden center. In the late 1970's, they started to expand their retail outlets into strip malls and then into malls. Before the company filed for bankruptcy in the mid 80's, they had, if I remember correctly, 28 stores in NY, NJ, MI, MD, PA & DE. At no time in their history did they ever manufacture any tool or toolbox.
My knowledge of this is from my starting working at USGS when they only had the 1 store (along with the mail order division) and progressing up to be the new store planner/ merchandiser.

 

[1982fxr]

Rumor sounds like total nonsense. I've never heard of any of that. Original rumor I mean.

Also I've never seen the original USG pebble paint red boxes under any other name.

 

[B_Bimmer]

I love my tool brand history... but am struggling to feel much here.

 

[Shitbox]

I remember shopping in the one in Hicksville, LI. It was a tool store but no house brand . I remember buying a Dremel there. They always made you fill out a name and address form for your purchases, which I thought was none of their business. Credit cards were not as widely used, then. I filled one out: M. Mouse, Disney World , FL and they took it. Home Depot or Lowes probably has pretty much the same stuff.

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Yeah, the one in Sacramento was like that around 2000. Got a 60 gal. Ingersol Rand compressor from them as well as I/R da, line sander, die grinders, air ratchets, and some Black & Decker corded stuff.

Sorry can’t add anything to the US general discussion. Back to the topic now.