Why would I pay 15 times a reasonable price just so my tool guy can ride around in his big old shiny truck all day? Sorry I refuse to pay more than I absolutely must for quality tools. I have had more success with buying tools at pawnshops and ebay than I have ever buying off the truck. Find a friend going to tech school and piggyback off his graduation order. Snap On at half off. The only way to buy it.
The local welding store has to mark things up so much I can't logically afford to buy it there. I order pretty much everything from RAM and it gets here in plenty of time. If I need it local I will buy it, but for the most part local rarely competes. Since the invention of the interwebs, pricing equipment has become more critical. If I don't need personal assistance, then I just assume order what I need based solely on price. If my welding shop was withing 10% of what I could find it online, I would buy from him every time. But the last thing I priced from them was Silicon Bronze TIG rod. For a pound they wanted to charge me 36$ before tax. I could order the same thing from RAM for 9$ a pound. Even with shipping I come out cheaper.
My money is hard to come by why would I want to waste it recklessly? So for a large part price drives the sale in my book. Another thing to remember is most people don't build, repair or work on stuff anymore. I don't even think they teach shop class anymore. People pay a service or buy some Chinese junk. Most of them can't do anything themselves, so why do they need quality tools that last a lifetime. They need something to get a simple task done now. Kinda like the tube bending thread. People want the cheap HF pipe bender and then want to figure out how to make it work with proper tubing. They buy that crap because its cheap. Instead the people making nice benders can't sell a proper bender because people only want cheap junk.
I resently bought a angle grinder made by of all names Lotus of U.S.A. Haa haa That was total B.S. Good luck in your tool quest!
