The system

ToughBuilt StackTech, and the drawers the big two do not offer

A 250 lb base like PACKOUT and ToughSystem, 50 lb modules like Ridgid and Klein, and more drawers per box than any of them. Here is what the published numbers actually support.

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Modular storage sorts itself on two published numbers - what the base carries while rolling, and what each stacked module carries. StackTech lands in an interesting spot: top tier on the first, middle tier on the second.

Every lift-lid modular system shares one flaw: to reach the bottom box you unstack everything above it. In a garage that is mildly irritating; on a job site with three boxes stacked it is the reason the bottom box ends up holding whatever you need least.

Drawers fix it structurally, and StackTech puts up to three of them in a single module with 22 dividers included. That is a genuinely different proposition from a lift-lid box with a tray - it is closer to a very small tool chest that happens to clip onto a stack, and for fasteners, terminals and small hand tools it works exactly the way a chest drawer does.

Klein reaches the same conclusion from the other end by putting drawers at the rolling base. MODbox is worth comparing directly if drawers are what you came for, because the two systems solve the same problem at opposite ends of the stack.

It is the constraint to plan around and it is easy to underestimate. Fifty pounds is a lot of fasteners and a lot of hand tools. It is not a lot of automotive tooling: a 200-piece socket set runs about 24 lb and a half-inch impact set about 18, so two items put you at 42 of the 50 before a ratchet.

Read that as a statement about what the system is for rather than as a criticism. Fifty-pound modules with three drawers and 22 dividers describe a system built for many small things, which is a real and common need - and a steel cabinet drawer rated at 120 lb per pair is what you want for the other case.

There is no published IP rating for StackTech, where Milwaukee and DeWalt both publish IP65 for PACKOUT and ToughSystem 2.0. That does not mean the boxes are unsealed - it means the sealing has not been tested to a standard and published, and an unrated seal is a claim rather than a specification.

If the stack lives in an open truck bed in the rain, that gap is the thing that should decide against it. If it lives in a van or a garage, it very likely does not matter. Either way it is worth knowing rather than assuming, which is the same test we apply to Klein for the same missing spec.

• People whose problem is sorting, not carrying weight - fasteners, terminals, bits, small hand tools across many categories.
• Anyone who wants drawers in a modular stack without buying into Klein's electrical-trade-shaped range.
• Buyers who value the base capacity and can live with 50 lb modules above it.
• Not automotive work, where the 50 lb module limit is reached by two socket sets.
• Not an open truck bed in wet weather, where an unpublished seal is a real risk and IP65 is available elsewhere.