I Love You Harbor Freight, But You Smell Like Plastic Hell

[Ashful]

Very entertaining read... wish I wrote it:

As I'm typing this, somewhere nearby is a transmission jack that I own. There's also a mini tire changer and a portable wheel balancer and a five-ton gear puller. Five tons! That's a frigload of tons!

Someday I may use these tools for the purposes intended, but if I don't, so what? I bought them at Harbor Freight, which means no one would care if I used them at all. Least of all, perhaps, me. And it's probably safer that way.

Harbor Freight is a national chain of discount tool stores that's become an obsession among the tool-crazed of every mechanical ilk. It's both Greek Agora and Santa Claus of hardware, a giant, bottomless toybox to satisfy any impulsive DIY fantasy for alarmingly few dollars. Did I mention I have a 24" Pittsburgh-brand crescent wrench with a head the size of Ron Perlman's fist? Goddamn straight I do. I think it was 20 bucks. Anyone have a drawbridge that needs dismantling, I'm your guy.

Our brains are hard-wired to love tools. We love them for what we can do with them, and for what we wish we were doing with them right now. Sure we can slap on a set of brake pads, but sometimes we just want to sit Indian-style among a crapload of cheap tools dreaming of Keith Duckworth coaxing 10 extra horses out of a Double Four Valve. Harbor Freight is where this kind of wishful thinking meets actual utility.

Harbor Freight's tools are so cheap, they've changed the whole dynamic of tool ownership. In the old days, if you needed a tool you didn't have, you'd call a friend and say something like, "Hey man, can I borrow your impact wrench?" And he'd say, "poophead, you still have my impact wrench from the last time you borrowed it." Now, you'd just go to Harbor Freight and buy six or seven impact wrenches, then go home and build an impact-wrench-powered go-kart.

Indeed, Harbor Freight's killer app is access to the kind and quantity of tools a part-time mechanic might never have considered buying. Pre-Harbor Freight, you'd say things like, "Buy an engine hoist? Do I look like Mister folking Goodwrench?" Now you'll pick up a couple, plus a rolling engine stand — for the price of screwdriver set from Snap On — so you could pull the F22B out of your wife's old Honda Accord and smash it through the wall of the sun porch while drunk.

Here's a perfect example: Harbor Freight sells a portable scissor lift that can hoist a 6,000-pound car — all four wheels off the ground. It costs $1,200, which is a lot for a tool, but not a lot for a lift. Think of the convenience: You set up the lift in the morning, drop your car's subframe by noon, and be released from the hospital six weeks later, minus a foot.

You see, Harbor Freight's tools, while cheap and often flimsy, are reasonably useful. They're robust enough for at least one serious use before breaking. Sometimes, Harbor Freight tools don't work at all, and that provides a tantalizing bit of dramatic tension. Will this $5 brake bleeder douse me in fluid? Who cares? It's five bucks, and I just bought 38 of them. Know what you're getting for your birthday this year? Maybe a bath in brake fluid, maybe a workable one-man brake bleeder. Cross your fingers. Or at least, count them.

Although Harbor Freight's mission is purportedly to stretch your tool-buying dollar, the best thing about it is the sheer acquisitive joy. Imagine you're a kid on a museum field trip with a $50 bill your dad that morning stuffed into your hand on the way out the door. (Shhh. He thought it was a five). After a gift-shop orgy, you run home with a bag of cheap, amazing crap. Now, if you compared the cost of those keychains, polished rocks and rubber-band-powered grist mills to the value of love bursting from your heart, it would have microwaved Milton Friedman's skull. Harbor Freight's value proposition is exactly the same, only for grown-ups with credit cards.

The reason they're so cheap is that Harbor Freight tools are made — mostly in China — of a kind of bargain plastic that sublimates directly from solid to a gas, like dry ice, losing their mass year after year in a pungent waft of formaldehyde and pickled sea cucumber. I'll bet if you put a Harbor Freight 12V grease gun in a time capsule, 50 years later you'd find just a pile of lithium and an on-off switch.

One day we may find out the Chinese have been intentionally fouling the sperm of American males with something sinister in those outgases, making our offsprings' heads get all misshapen like that Forever Alone guy from the Internet. It wouldn't matter. That smell of plastics laden with phthalic acid — which chemists use as "plasticizers," softening agents added to make plastic tools more flexible and durable — is like bath salts to Harbor Freight toolheads. To them, that pungent, plasticky scent is like freshly cut grass or the yeasty aroma from a pub doorway on a Saturday evening. When it comes to aromatic hydrocarbons, teenaged glue sniffers in the '70s had nothing on Harbor Freight denizens.

As the quality of consumer products go, Harbor Freight tools fit somewhere between the junk you buy absent-mindedly while waiting at the car wash and Sears's Craftsman line. But if you're only going to use your drill press in anger, say, twice a year, the cost-benefit works out. And many, many people do get good use out of the stuff they buy at Harbor Freight, even when they actually use it. Maybe they couldn't run a commercial shop on Harbor Freight merch, but that's what the higher-priced stuff is for.

When I bought the jack, the balancer, the wrench, and the other stuff I've accumulated from Harbor Freight I swear I had the best of intentions. Perhaps I was lured by the promise of a particularly sexy kind of extreme automotive utility, which sounds kinky enough to be an actual thing. Call it temporary chemical psychosis, brought on by delusions of grandeur and mild asphyxiation. Keith Duckworth would be appalled.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

The only cure for this is a hefty import tax.

 

[Ashful]

The only cure for this is a hefty import tax.

"Cure"? You want to cure blissful joy?

... and I quote: "Will this $5 brake bleeder douse me in fluid? Who cares? It's five bucks, and I just bought 38 of them. Know what you're getting for your birthday this year? Maybe a bath in brake fluid, maybe a workable one-man brake bleeder. Cross your fingers. Or at least, count them."

 

[bassJAM]

Yeah, personally I'm thankful for cheap crap from HF. Most of the tools I use a lot of Craftsman or Kobalt with some Snap-on and Mac thrown in, and my power tools are all Bosch, Makita, ect. but every now and then I'll need something that's normally expensive that HF sells for cheap. Got a set of aluminum loading ramps, and the quality is actually really good. The ATV lift is decent too. While my dirt bike stand works, the metal is similar to the plastic described above and bends remarkably easy. But luckily, I have a cheap HF dead blow hammer to straighten it out, and if I need a little more oomph I've also got a 20 HF shop press. I normally only go in there for those cheap items that are expensive everywhere else, but typically pick up a few extra cheap items like rubber mallets whenever I stop in.

 

[Jags]

I have HF pneumatic tires on my two wheel wood dolly. Does that count??

 

[Ashful]

I'm like bassJAM... two garages full of vintage Proto (the west-coast mechanic's Snap-On of the 1960's), Snap-On, and Craftsman mechanics tools, with mostly Bosch and Milwaukee handheld power tools... but I do have some bearing and gear pullers from Harbor Freight, along with a few other very infrequently used items. They're great for tools that you know will be one-time use, or used too infrequently to invest heavily.

Doesn't change the fact that this article was funny as hell. I wonder how many of those commenting (razerface) took the time to read the whole thing.

 

[razerface]

i hate that place. My son bring junk home from there once in a while. I hate cheap junk that passes for tools. I have to drive 50 miles to get to HF,,so i own good tools that do not break every time i use them.

Yes it costs more,,,,but I can do a 10 minute job in 10 minutes with a good tool,,, or drive 100 miles and waste 2 hours replacing the junk i just broke, having a temper fit the whole time. no contest.

 

[bassJAM]

Honestly I'm sure we've all cursed HB a time or two, but I've yet to find a part that was absolute crap (beside an 18V cordless drill somebody gave me that had a battery life of about 20 seconds). They've got a store on the way home from work so it's easy, and I've never had to return anything yet.

It does have that odd smell, I'll have to be sure to remember to not eat the plastics or paint chips just in case the OP's story has a point.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

HF sell the tools you dont mind lending out when you know you wont get them back. Bought an oscillating tool ,lasted an hour,i liked it so much i bought another ,but this time i bought a craftsman. Have quite a few hours on it already ,works great.Even though it cost twice as much ,it will last 20 times longer. They should change the HF name to "china freight" .

 

[velvetfoot]

TSC smells the same.

 

[jharkin]

I thought it was hilarious... and very true.

For disclosure, I own a HF bench top drill press (won it in a raffle) that works halfway decent, and I have a quite nice rollier chest from them that I paid real money for (and got better reviews than craftsman). And I think I have a bearing puller set someplace.

Other than that I dont make a point of shopping there. Ive learned the buy cheap buy twice lesson and try to buy better brands now. Power tools are mostly DeWalt and vintage 60s Crafstman hand me downs from dad. Hand tools are lot of Craftsman (wish I could afford SnapOn), but I do have some of the Kobalt/Lowe's house brand stuff that's not too bad.

 

[razerface]

I wonder how many of those commenting (razerface) took the time to read the whole thing.

i read the whole thing. Did not make me love HF reading about buying 38 of a brake bleeder,,,,,which implies the writer knows he is buying junk,,and buys 38 of them to get the job done,, which I know the number is embelished, but typical of HF tools.

LOL,,, Not my style.

I still hate HF.

38 funny stories would not change my mind.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Just to be fair HF business model is not much different from Wal-mart . Buy dirt cheap from 3rd world slave labor countries and sell to the masses at big markups.

 

[Delta-T]

i bought some glow in the dark rope from HF to make a cool hammock...took weeks for the smell to go away. kept hoping it wasn't the actual rope fibers...eventually faded away. Very curious combo of plastic, machine oil, rubber and lead paint.

 

[bag of hammers]

Funny article. We have Tool Town here - variation on the same theme. Cheap crap abounds....

 

[1750]

I'm not a fan of cheap tools for the reasons already mentioned. This gentleman, however, can really turn a phrase!

Now, if you compared the cost of those keychains, polished rocks and rubber-band-powered grist mills to the value of love bursting from your heart, it would have microwaved Milton Friedman's skull.

 

[Retired Guy]

HF tools have their place - at the bottom of the tool bag. Not because they don't work but because I use them once every couple of years. Except their speed squares - I use that quite a bit.