Milwaukee sent over a review sample of their latest and greatest premium tool storage combo. I was a little surprised by the price of the order – $900, and asked them whether that will remain for the rest of the season, or if it was a very limited deal.
(It turns out that, logistically, it’s easier for Milwaukee to purchase tool storage combos at retail for delivery. They sent an order confirmation my way for tracking purposes, which is where I saw the retail price.)
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My Milwaukee contact got back to me and said:
The product manager said that $798 price is good through Christmas, and then will likely go back to $998.
$798? How’d she get the price wrong? But then I looked.
The combo is down to $798!! It was $1000 when it launched, went on sale for $900, and is now even lower, at $800. It’ll go back to its regular price after the holiday season (as I had anticipated but needed confirmation for).
I discussed the new Milwaukee tool storage combo, 48-22-8546, in my NPS17 preview post, here. Basically, this newer tool storage combo is a bigger and more heavy duty box, compared to their other 46″ tool storage combo.
The tool storage combo is 22″ deep, making it 4″ deeper than their other 46″ combo. The drawer slides are soft-closing and rated to 100 lbs.
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It comes with some accessories and corner protectors, but I didn’t install any of them yet. Right now I’m still working to make room for the test sample, but I do have a first impression I’d share. Two words: spacious, solid.
I am impressed. A quick test showed everything to be nice and smooth.
I couldn’t lock the unit when I tested the key, and it turned out it was because one of the drawers wasn’t fully closed on its left side. The drawer slide popped out or something like that. During assembly, I was also confused, thinking that not enough screws were provided. The 4 hex bolts for the side handle aren’t supplied with the handle, they’re provided in a baggie with brackets that make use of the same hex bolts.
Even the casters are enormous, with 6″ diameter wheels. The drawers are 19.8″ deep, giving you plenty of space for your tools and supplies.
This is the BEST tool storage combo you can buy right now, at this price point. If you can budget a little more, Husky’s 56″ heavy duty combo is another very good option.
Sale Price: $798 plus delivery ($55 for “basic”)
Buy Now(via Home Depot)
Attaching the casters to the bottom unit, and lifting the chest on top of the cabinet, was not easy for me to do by myself. I’m not going to tell you how I did it, but I will tell you to be careful, smart, and work with a helper or two (at least).
Brian A
The $798 price is good in store till February. I use a block of wood and jack to get casters on.
Adam
Thanks for that. Makes it much more feasable to get
Bill
Brian, where do you the info on this sale lasting until February?
Brian A
When I saw the price drop in store it had a Feb date on the sticker which usually is the date the price is good till, asst mgr confirmed it should be on sale till then
Adam
Man, I so would have bought it had this been last week (and the price was $800). Menards had their 11% that HD matches, and I would have had my dad ‘buy’ it for his extra 10% off.
Good deal still. Might have to look into selling our current unit
Julian
Finally, someone is making a chest deeper than the 18” models which have been the standard depth of all the cheap chests out there. I was very impressed when I looked it over in person.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, looked over the Lennox badged chests at Lowe’s the other day, and what a damn shame. If possible, they felt even cheaper than the $200-300.00 Husky chests st Home Depot.
To have the Lennox name on a tool chest is odd enough, but to have it on a pile of crap chest is just no good.
Whiskey and Wood
I believe it’s at least built in the USA, and the unit I handled in person seemed really solid, I wonder if there are multiple models? Or maybe he version in your store wasn’t assembled well? I’ve seen a few chests at retail stores where the bolts weren’t tightened by the local $8/hr assembly guy and they felt terrible, but once tightened up we’re nice and solid. Just a possibility.
Brian A
When in Lowes yesterday I made a point to look at the Lenox, yes felt super cheap, like bottom line Craftsmans.
Whiskey and Wood
The CAT USA assembled ones on Amazon are $999 with free shipping right now, at 52” it’s a decent setup for the price as a comparison, but 20% less for almost as large of a chest is pretty nice!
Bill
Thanks, Stuart.
You just made my day.
I’ve had my eye on this unit for all the reasons you mentioned in your initial review. Do you know how long this sale will run?
Stuart
Probably through the end of the year, pissi my into the new year.
Julian
In my experience, the only assembly on the big chests is adding the wheels and the side handles. At any rate, the gauge of the drawer steel was very thin and the movement of the drawer slides seemed quite cheapy feeling.
A better chest might use the same gauge but includes an edge rolled or fold detail that stiffens it greatly. That’s why just comparing the gauge is only half the story.
Bryan
Nice chest especially at that price point, just wasn’t big enough for my needs so I went with the Harbor Freight 56 top & bottom for under a grand.
fred
My Local HD – had it priced at $698 for the floor sample. I resisted the temptation.
glenn
Oh how I wish! Over $2100 in Australia.
Seriously, I would buy 2 at your pricing.
PB
For some reason I keep coming back to Husky. I really like the Milwaukee for color, finish, and features, but I still default to bang for buck when it comes to tool storage. I’d rather spend extra on tools.
I must also say the caster’s on the higher end Husky are some of the nicest ones I have ever seen.
These two Husky ones are hard to beat for value, they aren’t made in USA, and not as cool looking but I just got the more expensive one during HD’s black friday sale for $600, which is borderline ridiculous.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-52-in-W-20-in-D-15-Drawer-Tool-Chest-and-Cabinet-Textured-Black-H52CH6TR9/206828259
Otherwise this one:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-52-in-13-Drawer-Tool-Chest-and-Cabinet-Combo-in-Black-H52CH6TR7P/207105936
Is also hard to beat when $500 is the normal price. Forget going to harbor freight.
___
I know this has been asked on previous posts. Assembly (Leverage, but you have to be able to momentarily lift about 115lb):
I had 3 HD guys load it into my truck, it comes in two boxes that are both a couple hundred pounds. Only took me to put it together.
1)Pulled the lower chest out by tipping it out of the truck with aid from the tailgate. Letting it stand vertically. The key here is to let the gate hold the weight and control the fall.
2) Closed tailgate.
3)Tipped it back horizontal to the floor onto a furniture dolly.
4)Used the dolly to act as a fulcrum to lift one side of the box in the air to attach the first two casters.
5)Slid the dolly until the other side was in the air. If I needed more height I would just throw a peice of wood on top of the dolly.
6)Once the four corner wheels were on I placed one set of casters on top of the furniture dolly which raised the middle enough to install the mid casters.
7) Opened tailgate and rolled lower chest to edge of gate.
8)Removed all packaging from top chest except for bottom cardboard.
9)Slid top chest onto top chest. It wasn’t too difficult, but I had to lift the chest for a bit to get it over the side lip, and I had to continually push the lower chest back to the truck. The key is that the cardboard allows everything to slide pretty easily.
10) once the top chest was in place, I only had to lift up each side to remove the bottom cardboard/packing foam.
Stuart
They delivered the unit outside the garage door. I had to get the chest up from ground level. Not fun, easy, or safe to do solo.
Bruce
I knew that chain hoist was a good investment….
Brian A
Btw, if anyone paid 998 or 898 you can get $ back, even if ordered from HD.com, within 30 days. They even credited me back a $100 even though I used a 10% and got free delivery.
Toolfreak
Looks like a great storage solution for the price, particularly if you have Milwaukee power tools. Nice that it’s deeper at 22 inches, but 24 would have been even better.
I don’t really care for the “soft-close” feature, not that the soft closing is bad, but it results in a “hard-open” where you need to yank the drawer to get it open initially, and you’re also forced to have the drawer close slowly and softly every time.
Not really a dealbreaker I guess, but I’ve gotten real used to being able to pop out a tool chest drawer real fast and close it real fast, and having to yank open a drawer every time and have it close slowly and softly every time seems like it could get pretty annoying.
Mike
if you are lucky some stores have the original Milwaukee for $498…thats a steal as well.
PB
Ouch! Sounds like a job for…
We have this thing where I work that is pretty amazing, it is a little heavy. When I first learned what it was, I was amazed that I had never heard of such a thing, I’m still amazed by this tool whenever I think about it.
… a Johnson Bar
http://kk.org/cooltools/johnson-bar-or/
Or i guess a Pry Truck or Pry Lever Bar, also a names that I never heard of until literally just now when I Googled the Johnson Bar.
It doesn’t look like much. But if you can get even a smidge (such as the thickness of a cardboard box) of that lever underneath a super heavy object you can lift it up enough to put something under it.
The wheels let you shimmy the lever part of it deeper to get more of a hold. And you can use it like a dolly.
Definitely an underrated tool.
Nathan L
That’s a cool tool. A google search suggests that a Johnson Lever is most commonly used to refer to a control on a train locomotive, but it also let me discover that apparently this tool is most commonly called a lever dolly, or at least that’s the category for the tool at Northern Tool, which has a variety of them. They’ll sell you a lever dolly rated for 11,000 pounds (!) for less than $100 with shipping, which seems pretty reasonable.
firefly
Northern Tool probably have the best price when it come to those sort of equipment. I personally owned one of those level dolly that I got from Northern Tool. I don’t use it much but it has been more than paid for itself for the few times that I need to use it.
Bill
Well I got mine home yesterday and managed to get both boxes off of the HD rental truck, by myself, with the help of the built-in ramps and gravity. While the off loading of both boxes went well, it was the unboxing that didn’t. I started with the bottom chest. After removing the top of the box and the styrofoam beneath it, I found that both of the top rear corners of the chest were badly damaged. Both corners looked as if they had been knocked in with few blows from a 10lb sledge hammer. Without looking any further for damage, I just wrapped it back up and called HD for an exchange. While this was certainly disappointing, my call to HD went well and I sit waiting for the exchange within the next hour or two. I will update this when I get my new box setup and working.
PB
That sucks! That’s my greatest fear, especially when you hear stories about the boxes looking fine. Hope you loaded it back into the truck ok.
Bill
Sorry for the delayed followup I promised but with Christmas in the middle a lot of things got delayed. The biggest delay/problem really lies with Home Depot in this case. I’ve never had any significant problems in my dealings with HD but this time they seemed to be dropping the ball at every turn.
As I stated above, I was waiting on Wednesday, the 20th for my replacement to arrive via a 3rd party delivery truck. All arranged by the HD manager where I initially purchased the tool chest. The delivery window came and went with no completed delivery. After contacting the manger, he told me that it would now be tomorrow before the deliver could be made. Because his store did not have any more stock of this tool chest, he was getting the replacement from another nearby HD.
When I called the other HD the next morning to ensure that my delivery was on the way, I was told that they also did not have any of these Milwaukee tool chests in stock. Not only did they not have any but I was told that no other HD store in South Florida had any in stock and that none were on order or could be ordered! I was out of luck! Mind you, that while I was being told this, I could see on HD’s website that five local stores had inventory showing 9 in stock. The very HD that gave me this info claiming that total S. Fl. inventory was 0, showed 3 of the 9 in stock.
At this point it was clear to me that no one at HD had any idea what was going on. At least as related to this item and solving my problem. The next day my wife had an appointment at a local hospital for physical therapy so I drove her and used the time in wait to visit yet another local HD, even though they did not show any inventory of my tool chest. When I located the tool and hardware manager he said that he thinks
‘we might still have one somewhere’. After about a ten minute search we found the two box set up high on a pallet back in lumber. It was the last one he had. Well at least that he knew of. Next I located the store manager to get him involved and lay claim to my replacement chest. I finally had this replacement delivered to me on Friday the 22nd but had to wait another day for a store manager to personally retrieve the original damaged chest on Saturday.
Sorry for the long winded story but I did leave out the hours I spent on the phone and finally talking to HD corporate just to get this resolved. It should never take this much time and effort to get what you paid for. While each of the people I dealt with at HD was pleasant to deal with the results were not. The bottom line is, this all reeks of gross incompetence.
Gary
It shows this at $898 on HomeDepot.com when I check. Is this $798 price still good?
Stuart
I still see $798. Can you try another zip code?
Gary
Yes, that worked. I tried a couple other stores within driving distance, and they show $798. Wonder why the prices are different?
Mike
They are sneaky…they only will adjust the price if you have a store in your area in stock, otherwise it will show $898.
KeithinKC
I picked up one of these today. As a former auto mechanic, I would say this is definitely a solid box for home or medium duty use. I wouldn’t expect it to hold up as well under heavy usage in an auto shop, but it’s solid enough that it might surprise me. The drawer bearings just don’t look or feel heavy duty enough for the kind of abuse it would get every day in my former profession. That being said, I bought one due to it being a great value for a really well built box.
It weighs a lot, but it was pretty easy to unload from my pickup with the help of a friend. Unpacked everything, laid the box on its back, installed casters, set bottom box on the ground, then put top box in place. I only needed my friend’s help for 10 minutes. After he left I installed the connectors for top to bottom boxes, the pull handle, and dragged it into the garage.
I did get 3 55 gallon trash bags full of cardboard and styrofoam.
Joe FL
I just picked up on of the newer, better, shinier ones today and was able to confirm with the manager that the pricing should stay at $798 “for a long time”. I threw out the end of February date and he said “way beyond that.” He also confirmed that despite my best efforts I wasn’t going to be able to get the original combo down below $698 even though it was the only one. They won’t start staggering down towards clearance pricing “for a long time.” This was the same story at three Home Depot’s I checked here in South Florida.
I take delivery New Year’s Day and can’t wait to finally get everything packed into it!
Bill
Joe Fl,
Hopefully you will have a much better experience than I did. I am also in South Florida and I wrote about my travails above. My new tool chest is now together and will be a part my revamped and reorganized garage which will probably take me a few weeks to complete.
Funny thing is I was just looking on Milwaukee’s website to get some stats on my new box, but I could not find it anywhere. Mine is the same one as the subject of this article. The 18 drawer, 46″ wide “Milwaukee Premium Tool Storage Combo”, model # 48-22-8546. Because I couldn’t find it on their website I decided to give them a call to see what’s up. Milwaukee told me that they are “no longer making any of the large tool chests and when the current supply is depleted we do not know when or if they will be made again”. She went on to say that right now they are focusing on the new Packout Rolling Tool Boxes and that most of these were currently out of stock.
All I can say Joe is that I hope you personally traveled to the HD and put your hands on the unit you purchased.
JoeFL
Thanks Bill – good info, and good luck on the garage reorg! I definitely put my hands on it (I might have hugged the box when no one was looking…) and am having it delivered January 1st. I’m surprised they’re discontinuing the product as everyone seems to love them.
As a tip for others, they only charged the $19.95 Pro Delivery fee because I agreed to have at least 2 people at delivery to take it off the truck.
Bill
Joe, how’s the new tool chest?
Was the delivery and setup smooth?
Joe FL
Delivery is delayed until Friday because they realized the Pro Delivery truck was not a smart move for such heavy boxes, and are now sending it on a box truck. They did honor the original $19.95 price though which is great.
Bill
Sorry to hear about the delay Joe, but frankly I’m not surprised.
I don’t think I’m being overly critical of HD, but they seem to get the most basic things wrong. Delivering large heavy items is nothing new for them. They do a sizable business with the building trade and they deliver appliances, tools and large loads of lumber daily. A simple checklist should be used whenever they agree to deliver something. How big is it? How much does it weigh? Where’s the delivery point, dock height or ground level? Accessibility; commercial, industrial or residential? Need for delivery aids; e.g., forklift, crane or additional personnel?
I’ll go way out on a limb here and suggest that they didn’t “discover” that they were going to need a bigger truck (I can’t resist the Jaws movie quote, “You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat”) until the morning of the delivery.
In my case they didn’t even know what they had or where they had it. No inventory control.
Again, good luck Joe, but I do know you will love your new tool chest when you finally get it.
Joe FL
Delivery was completed (with only 15 mins notice by the HD driver – ugh) and I got it setup Friday night. The bottom section was definitely possible to install the casters and other parts using a little creative leverage just by myself. Getting the top chest up was, as many have mentioned, not safe or really possible solo. I called a neighbor and we both settled it in with a few grunts.
The material, fit and finish are all superb. I took the advice of others and used a heat gun to remove the decals from the powder coat with no peeling or damage. I can confirm the power strips are each rated at 15 amps and with 12 gauge wiring and right angle connectors.
Now I just need to resist the urge to go out and fill up the few empty spaces in the chest with new tools!
Bill
Congrats Joe.
I missed the heat gun idea, mine was a pain to get off even with some mineral spirits. I think I’ll remove the hinged notebook rest as I really don’t need it and it only gets in the way. I’m also contemplating adding an LED strip light under the top clamshell cover with a micro switch so that it comes on when lifted. Not really essential so that mod may take a while.
Vlad
Hi there,
I am hoping your reviews can provide some analytical information regarding gauge of metal, in addition to superlatives. The reason I ask, is that I recently purchased a Milwaukee 46inch box (based on your recommendation) and to be honest, I was very disappointed with the incredibly thin drawer walls, squeaks and poor build quality. I returned it after 3 weeks. Your tool reviews are really good, however, they lack empirical data for whcih to compare product-to-produc.t
Stuart
This is what Milwaukee says:
I haven’t noticed any squeaks and have not had any complaints about the build quality. My only complaint so far is that there was some weird brown gunk over the powder coat at the rear of the pullout work surface, but it cleaned off.
Are you sure you’re talking about this model and not the original?
If you want thicker drawers than 19 gauge steel, there are better-built products out there, but nowhere near this price point.
I don’t measure drawer thickness. In some cases manufacturers provide it. In others, the gauge can be misleading. Thinner construction can be sturdier than thicker, depending on how things are put together. Plus, it can be hard to measure accurately, since drawers and cabinet frames are powder coated. I don’t want to have to destroy the finish on multiple areas in order to get a reading that might not be practically useful.
Bill
Stuart,
I assume that your quote from Milwaukee is from an earlier press release. Either that or I just couldn’t find the info on their website.
I don’t know if you have seen any of my previous posts above, but this tool chest is no longer listed on Milwaukee’s website. Of the five “Steel Chests/Cabinets” that are listed, three of them show as, “no longer available”.
It does look like Milwaukee has updated their website recently, making some items easier to find with an improved layout. In fact it looks like the changes have been in the last few days.
As for the quality of this chest, I can say that I am quite please. I know that there are better tool chests available, but at this size they are double and triple the price.
Stuart
That was from Home Depot’s product listing.
Gary
Well, looks like I waited to long to make a decision. I can no longer find any locally for sale, and there appears to be no option to order one shipped. Looks like they’ve been discontinued.
It would be nice to know if they plan a replacement
John S
Yeah I was waiting to buy this myself but am bummed to no longer find it at HD. I’d love to know if this is planning to make a comeback.
Stuart
Not in this size. A larger one is coming out.
https://14cyiuhvcgv.com/what-will-happen-to-pricing-of-tool-chests-cabinets-combos-and-mobile-workbenches/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Brian
Why can’t I find this box at Home Depot or any stores. Where can I find one to buy. Thank you
Troy
At what location was this price at for 798 on that Milwaukee tool box
Stuart
I’m sorry – this deal ended 4 years ago.