One of the most important factors to consider when purchasing a toolbox is storage, notes Russ Schweers, owner of Custom Automotive Repairs and Sales in Elizabethtown, Pa. That’s actually the reason he decided to upgrade his toolbox this past November.
Though his old toolbox was “good”, it didn’t have quite as many drawers as his current 28-drawer Macsimizer Titan Mac Tools toolbox. The box comes in at 12’ 1” long, 4’ high, and 29-1/2” wide. Schweers’ favorite part of his box is the custom paint job. He had the toolbox painted blue and white to match his 1972 Oldsmobile 442 W30 – a car that’s taken him 18 years to restore. He also has a brass identifier in the top left corner that says, “Made Exclusively for Sergeant Russell W. Schweers,” in honor of the seven years he spent in the service.
He notes that the toolbox is the first thing people see when they walk into his shop.
“It just makes you kind of proud that you’re a mechanic with a box like that,” he says.
As for organization, Schweers has his toolbox split down the middle – one side is all metric tools, and the other is all standard. Since he works on both classic and modern vehicles, the shop owner finds this method of organization suits him, as he always knows which side of the toolbox to go to, depending on what type of vehicle he’s working on.
Some of Schweers’ favorite tools are also from Mac, including a 1/4” drive set, a camera Schweers uses almost every day, and a digital temperature scanner that allows the user to see how hot each cylinder is running. He notes that these tools “make a mechanic’s job so much easier.”
Currently, the shop owner is looking to add two end cabinets to his toolbox, but for the time being, he’s added a blue and white electrical cabinet that he uses to run all his diagnostic and battery-powered tools. The cabinet has many outlets that he can use to keep everything charged up.
Schweers has always had a knack for taking things apart and putting them back together. At age 12, he was picking up old lawnmowers around his neighborhood, taking apart two or three of them and putting them together as one, functioning lawnmower. He also started working on bikes, cars, tractors, – anything with an engine.
“I just had to know how it worked,” Schweers says.
Even in the army, Schweers’ service officers saw his mechanical inclination and made him their weapons specialist because as he put it, “They needed somebody that would keep their weapons firing at all given times.”
After he got out of the service, Schweers started driving truck for Yellow Freight. Not long after that, he decided to open his own shop. He felt there was a lack of a reputable automotive shop in his area after many different times of taking his vehicle in to be serviced, and it coming back scratched or with something loose.
The way Schweers sees it, working on the automobile is only about one-third of what being a garage owner is all about. The other two-thirds are about building a solid, trusting relationship with your customers.
“To me it’s personal. A lot of garage owners think it's just a moneymaking game, and to me, it's all about the customer that comes in, and then it’s about making sure the car is safe for them,” Schweers says.
Schweers’ shop consists of himself, his son, Austin, who runs the office, and a 17-year-old apprentice looking to become a technician.
