So I Bought a Pelican 0450 Toolbox

After learning about these $800 bombproof toolboxes in this thread, I knew I had to have one. I had no idea if it would live up to the promise, but I had to try. So I kept an eye on eBay listings for a few months, watching box after box sell for $4-$600 used. Finally I found this one listed in the wrong category with poor photos last week, and won it with a high bid of $212. I figured it was worth its own thread as I figure out if these have any use in our world, and decide if they're actually as cool as they seem on paper.

The toolbox got here today, and my first impression: This thing is huge! Shipping weight is 38 lbs. empty, and it's about as big externally as your typical Craftsmen top box. 

Pretty cool, huh? Here's its party trick: Flip it on its side, and it turns into a mobile workstation. The drawers open, the top flips 180 degrees to be a work bench (50 lbs. capacity) and there's even a little tray for all the bits and pieces that always seem to get lost in the paddock. Whoever designed this thing clearly had a background working on stuff in real life, not just on a computer. 

We used all of Pelican's products extensively in the military.

So, why'd I buy this thing? Simple: I wanted the tools and materials I carry in my truck to actually be useful. It has enough stuff in it to complete pretty much any project on the road, but the organization is such a mess that I always find myself bringing duplicate tools from home to avoid having to dig through the truck's tools. And, due to the slide-in camper, my truck tools need to fit comfortably in the cab.

Here's what the back seat looks like:

Not bad, right? Not so fast. Open the bags and it's just a pile of random tools. Unless you dump them out, you're never going to find what you're looking for. I've reorganized this setup three times, and nothing I do can make it usable. That's why I ordered the Pelican case. 

So, question one: Does the Pelican 0450 fit in the cab of the truck? I did a quick test fit:

Woohoo! It fits like a glove, and it's not hard at all to wiggle in and out of there.

So, it was onto the next step: Figure out if it's big enough. I dumped out both tool bags and started cramming things into the Pelican box, with the goal of just seeing if it could hold everything.

It did!!

Even better, once it was loaded up with everything I could still lift it without struggling too much. I think we have a winner!

So, what's next? Organization. That's going to be more than a 10-minute job, and I already ordered a few extra drawers in different sizes to play around with. I'm planning to spend a few hours this weekend playing around with tools until I get an arrangement I'm happy with.

For now, though, here's my verdict: This thing rules, and I can't wait to put it to a real test! 

Your tool bags look like after I got organized.

In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :

I'm not one of those "every screwdriver needs to face the same way" people, but I do hate needing tools and not being able to find them quickly. 

Cool! 

The back seat picture is the first picture that really does well with giving me a size perspective. Could you please put up some photos of next to popular sized items? 

Maybe next to a floor jack or some 4 ton jack stands, or a 5 gal bucket or Craftsman tool box, etc? 

In reply to John Welsh (Moderate Supporter) :

Banana for scale please.

Nice tool box but that looks like it would be really, really heavy with all the stuff in it. 

Oh it is. This will never be a carry-on, but with the wheels it's way easier to move around than the tool bag. As long as I can move it from my back seat to my tailgate or to another car without help, I'm ok with the weight. 

So, um... what happens to the drawer contents when you flip it 90 degrees so it can roll on the wheels?

I kicked it around like a soccer ball last night, and nothing really happens. Stuff moves around a bit, but each drawer kind of seals up when closed, so nothing leaves its drawer. 

How easily do those drawers slide in and out?

In reply to Woody :

Plastic on plastic friction slides, so they take a fair bit of effort to slide out of the box. I don't have any issue using it one-handed, though. And because there aren't normal drawer slides, all you do is lift up on the front and pull to remove the drawer and carry it wherever you're working.

CrustyRedXpress (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to John Welsh (Moderate Supporter) :

Banana for scale please.

Ask and you shall receive!

Did you ever try tool rolls? I find they work very nicely to organize tool bags. I have one for SAE and one for metric wrenches and it makes it really easy to tell if one's missing. When I'm at home, I hang them on the wall. So packing involves grabbing the roll off the wall, rolling it up and tossing it in the bag. I tend to use buckets with lids to hold fluids/aerosols because they fit well and buckets can be useful. I write the contents of the bucket on the lid.

I also wonder about the internal organization of this case as you're always flipping it on its back. Seems that each drawer either needs foam cutouts for each tool or you're going to have a random mess every time you move it. Or you just jam so much stuff in there that it can't move.

If you needed to ship your toolbox, though, this thing looks like the bomb. THose wheels look to be a pretty useful size, too.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

It is somewhat humorous that post purchase, the appropriate shipping container for this shipping container was just the shipping container itself.  

Keith Tanner said:

Did you ever try tool rolls? I find they work very nicely to organize tool bags. I have one for SAE and one for metric wrenches and it makes it really easy to tell if one's missing. When I'm at home, I hang them on the wall. So packing involves grabbing the roll off the wall, rolling it up and tossing it in the bag. I tend to use buckets with lids to hold fluids/aerosols because they fit well and buckets can be useful. I write the contents of the bucket on the lid.

I also wonder about the internal organization of this case as you're always flipping it on its back. Seems that each drawer either needs foam cutouts for each tool or you're going to have a random mess every time you move it. Or you just jam so much stuff in there that it can't move.

If you needed to ship your toolbox, though, this thing looks like the bomb. THose wheels look to be a pretty useful size, too.

I, too, use a tool roll for wrenches on the go, but have never found a tool roll that works well for sockets and such. But for wrenches, yeah, they're awesome. You can see mine in the top of the box in the photos.

And yeah, I'm not sure if I'll end up cutting foam, cramming things in, or sub-dividing the drawers with Kydex or something to limit the tools movement. I think I need to knock out a few projects with this before I can really get it dialed-in.

Shipping was a major consideration. I need to work on things on the road more often than most people, and would love to keep this in a package that could be shipped to California if needed. 

Yeah, for sockets I use rails like yours. The Harbor Freight ones because you can mix and match 1/4", 3/8" and 1/2" sockets on each rail, and because the ones I have come in both grey and black. I use grey for metric, black for SAE. They work pretty well.

I can totally see your dad calling you up and saying he's found some random old car with a race history or aftermarket parts in Wyoming and he wants you to help him drive it back to Florida. Get on an airplane, check the toolbox and voila.

Yeah that's neat. Didn't know I wanted one before just now. 

Ok, time to start organizing. I'd figured out that my stuff could be crammed into this thing, but now I need to figure out how to be able to effectively work out of it. 

First, I decided to see if swapping out a few of the deep drawers, nominally 2", would be a good idea. Pelican makes one, two, and four-inch drawers, and the 0450 can accommodate any arrangement totaling eight inches. 

So I ordered a few one-inch drawers, figuring they'd help me get things organized. And, well, that was a waste of $40. (anybody want to buy some drawers?) These are clearly designed for somebody building a custom toolset for a specific task with tool shadowing foam and a few tools per drawer laid out flat. This is great if you're building a toolbox to fix a specific airplane, but doesn't mesh well with this box's purpose: Fix anything I need to on the road or at the track. 

Plus, they eat up a bunch of space. They're almost exactly one inch deep, while the "two-inch" drawers measure nearly 2.75" deep because they replace one set of drawer glides with, well, more drawer. 

Here's a one-inch drawer with a screwdriver in it to show how shallow they are:

With the one-inch drawers out of the running, it was time to move in to what I had. First step: Condense my sockets so they'd fit into one drawer comfortably. I pruned a few overlapping sizes and rearranged the rails a little bit to make things more uniform, and ended up with what's pictured (plus my shallow 1/2" drive metric sockets, which were already in the drawer when I took this photo):

Next up: Screwdrivers and pliers, which I decided would earn top drawer thanks to how often I need them. I tested out a few different configurations, then decided one divider would solve all of my problems and let them share a drawer in harmony.

Some of you are probably having an aneurysm looking at the piles in that photo, and look, I get it, and I'm assuming your toolbox drawers don't have any of the tools touching each other, but that's not how I work. I've never had a problem finding what I need with this sort of setup. 

Time to make a divider! I grabbed a sheet of Kydex and the heat gun, and whipped up a quick and dirty drawer divider:

Ta-dah, the drawer is complete. It's not perfect, as I didn't bother dragging out the brake to make perfect corners, but it does the job fine and I won't feel too bad if I change my mind and reconfigure in a few weeks. I riveted the divider to the drawer instead of gluing to make it easier to remove in the future. 

There were still two drawers left to organize, so I laid everything out on the bench and started playing tetris. I settled on one drawer that would hold hammers, the hacksaw, pry bar, drill bits, electrical testers, compression tester and a few other odds and ends, while the final drawer would hold the drill and materials–stuff like hose clamps, electrical connectors, hose, tape, glue, tire plugs, etc.

What about wrenches and the torque wrench? The wrench tool roll fits so nicely in the top tray with the torque wrench that I decided that would become their permanent home. I'll put a bluetooth scan tool in the little spot next to it up top, too. 

After about an hour's worth of work, I ended up with this:

Success! And as an added bonus there's still room to squeeze in more stuff, like my small impact driver:

I tipped the box over a few times, rolled it, etc. etc. and things seem to stay put very well. And the massive wheels mean it rolls around fine, even on grass. 

There was only one more step: Let's see what it weighs! I posted before that I could lift it without hurting myself, but that's all I can promise. This certainly isn't something I'd want to carry up a flight of stairs, and the scale confirmed that. A Pelican 0450 toolbox full of mechanic's tools weighs 119 pounds. So, not too bad to lift in and out of a pickup truck, but I'd put together a smaller kit if I was planning a backpacking trip to the junkyard. 

I needed to figure out one more thing: WILL! IT! BLEND! Err, sorry, I meant SHIP! 90% of this toolbox's time will be spent traveling via car, but it would be nice to be able to ship it when necessary. Just for fun I quoted shipping it from Florida to California via UPS, and the total cost would be less than $200. Not bad for something you could build a $2000 Challenge car with!

At this point I'm going to say I've officially moved into the new toolbox, and the next step will be testing it out and making adjustments. I'll keep this thread updated as I go. 

Wow, that looks downright organized!

Definitely an upgrade.