Gladiator GarageWorks GAGB272DRG Premier Modular GearBox

This cabinet is deeper (and perhaps a little sturdier) than the other model.

I am not a mechanic or a carpenter, but I have acquired most of the tools necessary to keep up a home and fences do minor projects over 30 years. I had a 50 sq ft tool room in my garage that made me very unhappy. You could not find anything except accidentally, and things just acreted to the room over time--if nobody knew where to put something, it ended up in the toolroom. There was no room to work, and there were tools in about 8 different tool boxes, but labels kept coming off of them over the years, so you had to go through them all to find anything.

In a fit of utter disgust and desperation, I first went to Sears to see what Craftsman had. To be short, their cabinets were more expensive and less well built and unavailable in town.

I had seen these before, so I orderd this from Amazon, together with the Modular Drawers and the Worksurface. The cabinets have bumpers on the fronts and sides, and they are really built tough. They won't stop a 9MM round, but the load bearing surfaces, the casters, the hinges and doors and top are all solid and well-finished (no rough or sharp edges). There is a substantial area of steel with pegboard holes inside the doors, so you can hang "thin" tools such as adjustable wrenches in those areas. The drawer/shelf (it has about a 1.5" lip on it) and is very sturdy. It assembles easily and quickly for even a guy like me is not the handiest. The magnetic seal on the doors means you don't have to lock it to keep the doors from opening. I use it to store all of my power tools in their cases, and it is great for that. My wife also thinks they are very attractive, and the surfaces seem to be easy to clean.

Finally got permission from the boss (wife) to fix up the garage. Little does she know that I purchased the "King" of garage organization solutions...Gladiator GarageWorks. Gladiator GarageWorks is the ultimate solution and no, I do not work for them.

I considered building my own storage system but I would rather build furniture--soooooooo--now that I'm set up, it's time to build the Morris chair we've dreamed of owning.

I have one complaint regarding the packaging/shipping process. DAMAGE! I ordered and reordered a total of 26 Gladiator GarageWorks items from Amazon, kept 15 items, and returned 11 items after the reorders arrived damaged again. Two tries is all you get UPS, FedEx, Amazon, and Gladiator. The packaging should be more robust. The shippers could purchase a real soccer ball instead of using the packages they ship. Lastly, Amazon could take the lead and call a meeting with all involved to solve this problem. Everyone would make more money and your customers would be more satisfied...and everyone would make more money. Is anyone listening? I said EVERYONE would make more MONEY! Now there's an incentive! If you need help facilitating this meeting my services are at your disposal...for a price. :~)

P.S. I worked for one of the above mentioned shippers while in college and I know what I'm talking about. Soccer anyone?

Thank you...John K.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a 5-Star item but shipping is 1-Star via Amazon. This is a great heavy-duty cabinet and I recommend it without reservation to anyone who is looking for a solid heavy duty cabinet to hold their tools. The cabinet looks great, is easily moved around for projects and the internal shelf is full extension with roller bearings. Everything about the cabinet is extremely durable: the internal shelf, the piano hinges on the doors...even the casters which look like they would support a small truck. However, you will need to purchase this cabinet somewhere other than Amazon to receive it intact. I ordered it the first time and received it via Fed Ex. The cabinet had huge dents and the left door was so bent that it scraped against the bottom edge of the cabinet during closure because of the damage. As I said earlier, this is a heavy duty cabinet and you have to seriously mistreat it to cause this kind of carnage. I called Amazon and a second cabinet was sent via UPS. This one was also damaged but less so that the first. I called and voiced my concerns to customer service and the supervisors about shipping a THIRD item via the same methods. Prior to this order, I had ordered the GearDrawer which Amazon shipped via Ceva Logistics and this was received in PERFECT condition. After seeing this, I asked the Amazon supervisors if they could either ship the GearBox via Ceva or if they could offer me some assurances that efforts would be made so that the THIRD shipment would not arrived damaged. They could offer neither and shipped it again via FedEx. Well, it didn't arrived damaged...this time IT DIDN'T ARRIVE AT ALL. I was simply told that it was "lost in transit". When I called to discuss this issue, the supervisor promised that there will be an "internal investigation" in the shipping dept that will "assure this will not happen again". When I pressed for details or follow-up of the issue in a few weeks he could not tell me that there would be any more info forthcoming and that it simply "wouldn't happen again". He was fairly evasive the entire time. If Amazon could truly promise me it wouldn't happen again, I would re-order the item from them in an instant. As it stands, I had them finally refund the purchase and I will have to go to Sears to get this item. The main lesson here is that Amazon shipping methods are unreliable for large, heavy items such as tool chests, etc, and they can't (or won't) make any special effort to make sure it gets to you undamaged. Again, this is a terrific tool chest that I would encourage you to purchase as you will be very happy with it. However, I *strongly* recommend you buy it through your local store as it will almost certainly arrive damaged and subsequently send you on the same customer service merry-go-round that I had to endure.

Update 3/14/10: I didn't have the time or a truck to go pick this up from Lowes and Sears was not offering the Premium version of the cabinet. I figured that it's not costing me anything to order this multiple times from Amazon so I decided that I was going to re-order the item and have them send me as many replacements as it takes to get it right. I was prepared to have one shipped 1-2x/week indefinitely if needed. Either one would eventually show up undamaged by random chance or it would cost Amazon so much money in shipping charges that eventually they would notice and ship it via alternative means. The first one (4th attempt overall) showed up obviously badly damaged again (major damage to sides of cabinet) so was refused and taken back by UPS. The replacement (5th attempt overall) was shipped Fed Ex overnight and was left *upside down* on our front porch despite labels on all sides saying "This Side Up" and "Do Not Ship Horizontally". This one had two minor dents on the bottom edge of the cabinet. After banging these out with a hammer and turning the cabinet right side up, these are not noticeable so I've decided to keep this one. AGAIN: This is a great item and I give the cabinet 5-Stars for quality but you'll have to keep the shipping issues in mind if you decide to order it from Amazon.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 7 reviews  4.1 out of 5 stars