The system

DeWalt ToughSystem 2.0, and the one thing PACKOUT cannot do

It matches Milwaukee on the two numbers that matter and beats it on a third that never appears in a spec table: it still fits the boxes you already own.

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Two of those deserve comment. 20.61 lb empty is genuinely light for a box of this size, which matters because every pound of box is a pound you are not carrying in tools. And metal front latches rather than all-plastic ones is the sort of detail that decides whether a box is still working in five years.

ToughSystem has been around long enough that a lot of people own the first-generation boxes. DeWalt publishes that 2.0 is backward compatible with any ToughSystem product, which means an existing collection keeps working and the upgrade is incremental rather than a replacement.

PACKOUT cannot offer this, because it did not have a predecessor to be compatible with. That is not a criticism of PACKOUT - it is simply the one axis on which ToughSystem wins outright, and for anyone with a shelf of older boxes it is decisive.

DeWalt publishes that the ToughSystem 2.0 tower - the DWST08450 rolling base, the DWST08300 large box and the DWST08165 above it - carries about 20 percent more storage than the older equivalents. That is the only comparative figure DeWalt publishes in the range and it is worth reading carefully: it is a claim about the 2.0 tower against the earlier one, not against a competitor. Note also that the DWST08165 named in that claim is no longer orderable on Amazon under any seller, so the buyable tower is now the base plus the large box.

Practically, the tower is the point of the system. A rolling base on its own is one box on wheels. Base plus stacking module plus a lid organizer is a mobile storage unit, and the auto-connect latches mean assembling it is one motion rather than a fiddle.

• Wheel diameter. 8 in against PACKOUT's 9 in. On a shop floor this is irrelevant; on a gravel driveway or over a curb it is not.
• Range size. PACKOUT's accessory range is considerably larger, which matters over years rather than at purchase.
• Third-party ecosystem. More mounts, racks and adapters exist for PACKOUT than for ToughSystem.

None of those outweighs backward compatibility if you already own ToughSystem boxes. All of them matter if you are starting from nothing. The head to head puts the two side by side properly.

250 lb is the whole rolling stack, not each box. Against a steel cabinet whose individual drawers are rated at 120 lb per pair, a modular system stores far less per dollar and holds far less weight. It buys portability and IP65 sealing, and those are worth a great deal on a job site and very little against a garage wall. Tool chest vs modular.