On Sunday, April 12, 2020 at 7:15:32 AM UTC-4, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"rangerssuck" wrote in message
...

The nearest TSC to me is almost a hundred miles. It was like that for a long
time with Harbor Freight - I'd read about people going there and the closest
I could get was the web site. Now there are three almost equally local HF
stores (nearest is maybe 5 miles). I'm hoping the same will happen with TSC.
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My best sources for closeouts, second hand tooling and hobby-grade
imitations of industrial gear aren't the big chains, but single
locally-owned stores typically in low-rent old buildings on the edge of
town, who don't advertise and have to be found by word of mouth. I only use
TSC and Northern for stuff I can't find elsewhere for less.


Agreed - I used to have Dave Sobel just about five miles up the road, but he's gone and I haven't found a replacement. Those single-owner places are great, but finding out about them is a whole other story.

In my work doing industrial control retrofits (working on two large (100 cubic foot) blenders for a pharmaceutical plant now), and it would be nice to have a local supplier of "stuff" rather than having to buy from the likes of Automation Direct, Grainger and Amazon.