An Interesting Tool… Matco/Craftsman Ratchet

The Snap-On truck stopped by at work today. I noticed something interesting on the truck. This Matco stubby ratchet that the Snap-On man had.


He told me, “This was a ratchet that one of my customers sent back to Matco for warranty replacement. They sent him back this one! It was a manufacturing mistake. This Matco ratchet is $75 on the Matco truck, while at Sears it's $20. I keep it to show people if you are going to pay premium prices for a tool, you should get a premium quality tool!”

The first thing that crossed my mind…  maybe the Snap-On dealer bought the Matco and Craftsman ratchets, then put the Matco head on the Craftsman handle. Obviously he wants you to feel like spending big money on his tools is worth it.  As Snap-On tools are quite expensive.

Of course you do need to consider Craftsman and Matco hand tools are both made by Danaher. It's totally possible this is manufacturing defect that they overlooked. Maybe both the Matco and Craftsman ratchets are made in the same factory and on the same line.

If you have an on opinion on this, please post a comment below. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

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Adam loves cars and anything with wheels. He has many interests and passions but he especially loves writing and blogging. Hence starting this auto blog.

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adam

Adam loves cars and anything with wheels. He has many interests and passions but he especially loves writing and blogging. Hence starting this auto blog.

4 thoughts on “An Interesting Tool… Matco/Craftsman Ratchet”

  1. My local snapon dealer recently told me how the craftsman pro series was made on the same line as matco. He showed me a craftsman wrench and a matco wrench. He covered up both names that were stamped onto the wrench and they were identical. Snapon is all I buy. Oh and Mac tools are made buy Staney/black&decker tools

    1. Even if they looked the same, are you sure they were the exactly the same? The Matco ratchet might have had a better mechanism or more teeth. It would not surprise me if they were the same though!

  2. I saw this picture on our local snapon truck, I kinda laughed it off. There are tools I like from each mfg but snapon makes a good quality tool, but they can’t touch matco’s pinless impacts!

  3. I bought a set of deep box angel wrenches from matco for 200+ dollars , that weekend my wife and I were @ sears. Looking around the tools section and much to my dismay I saw some craftsman “professional” deep box angel wrenchs , that looked exactly the same ! For 70$$ so I bought them and compared to the matco’s …….well let me tell ya they have the same flipin part #s on them , so I did a Rockwell test and what do ya know they both have the same hardness ! So I started comparing the laser etched chromies and other than the matco is blue and the craftsman is gold there the same damn sockets ! I will NEVER buy anything from matco again ! Oh and yes I took those matco wrenches and told the matco guy to shove it !

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