On December 26, 1987 I returned a shirt that I received as a Christmas gift from a well meaning aunt to Wal-Mart. As I did not have the receipt they gave me a store credit for 9 bucks and some change. I scoured the clothing looking for something I might actually wear before giving up and heading over to the hardware section. While looking at the tools I saw a brand that I had not heard of before, Proamerica. There was maybe 5 or 6 small sets available. The one that caught my eye was a set of 5 SAE combination wrenches that came in a gray/clear plastic pouch with red lettering as I recall. This wrench set became my first tool purchase. Several years later when I got a job that required tools these 5 wrenches became part of the tools that I would use until I could replace with "better" tool truck equivalents. I ended up keeping the Proamerica wrenches in my work box with the Matco SAE wrenches I purchased used from Snap On. A few years later while borrowing a wrench a coworker told me that the ProAmerica wrenches were made in Dallas at National Hand Tool. That was over 20 years ago now. Over the years I have read all that I could find on the internet about Proamerica tools, the relationship to KAL and seemingly to Stanley/Proto. That said I have never seen anything concrete as to the true source for Proamerica wrenches. Has anyone ever confirmed that the Proamerica wrenches were made at NHT in Dallas? I understand that they produced Giller and later Thorsen. Could the same tooling have been used to produce the Proamerica wrenches the satin Thorsen wrenches do look similar? I have purchased several of the mil surplus SAE sets and at least one full set of Metric combination wrenches. I find myself using these wrenches over all of my shiny tool truck wrenches unless doing something more delicate given their thicker size.
Proamerica wrenches
- Thread starter mmotodad
- Start date
supertooljunkie
Well-known member
I have a small amount of ProAmerica wrenches. I have heard, or read somewhere they are owned by Stanley, and part of their contract line for filling orders for government hand tools, and sets.
redwrench60
Well-known member
Don't think I've ever seen Pro America wrenches. A pic or two might be nice.
This is one of several surplus military sets that I have. For a while I couldn't help myself from purchasing them. Some of them like this one have one or two KAL wrenches which are identical, some have had SK mixed in. I have also run across a few identical single wrenches on Ebay that were branded with an autoparts store that I believe to now be defunct. ]
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This is the style of packaging they came in when sold at Walmart in the late 80's. I had misplaced the original pouch at some time wrenching on my first car but have since purchased a few new old stock sets from fleabay. The vinyl pouch was made by SI Jacobsen out of Wukegan IL and is has a union stamp, IUAN&PW. The address for ProAmerica on the pouch is 1355 Darius Court, Industry, CA 91744. I believe previous posts on GJ or possibly on another tool forum listed that address as belonging to KAL tools. The second image is the govt purchasing number for the wrench set. I have seen other sets (brands) on ebay using the same number, SK comes to mind.
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B_Bimmer
Well-known member
I have seen plenty of those as government surplus, interesting to hear they were also in some stores. Always came across as a bit bulky, but strong.