So I was flipping through a 1955 issue of Car Craft Magazine and the slip above fell out. Apparently, a man named Ernie Perez had charged up a $1,100 bill to Snap-On in 1955 and was paying it off $2 a week. At that rate, Ernie’s bill would be all paid up around 1966 or so.
It got me thinking about a question I’ve always wondered about, but never asked. When I was a parts manager at a custom bike shop in college, I was always mesmerized by the HUGE “mortgage” our mechanics would build up with the Snap-On and Mac trucks. I mean, these guys were making less than I was (a college student), but many of them were more than $20k in the tool hole.
So, here’s the question… Does anyone have a statistic on how many of these “mechanic loans” go bad? I don’t recall a whole lot of paperwork behind these deals. It was just, “Yeah man, give me $50 a month for a few years and we will call it even.”
It all seems crazy to me… and I wonder how much of this craziness is built in to the high prices of both Snap-On and Mac.
