I Spent $600 on Original Batteries Last Year. Here's What I Do Now.
I run a small remodeling crew. Three guys, a truck full of tools, and what feels like a never-ending appetite for batteries. Last spring I sat down to do the books and nearly choked on my coffee. Over the previous twelve months I'd spent more than $600 just replacing dead battery packs. Not tools. Not blades. Just batteries. The little plastic bricks that power everything we touch. That was the day I decided something had to change. The Math That Made Me Angry Here's the dirty little secret of the cordless tool world: the tool is the cheap part. The manufacturers practically give them away, because they know the real money is in the batteries. A single brand-name pack can cost as much as the bare tool — sometimes more. And on a busy site, batteries die. They get dropped, they wear out, they walk off in someone's truck. Multiply that across a crew, across a year, and you get a $600 line item that makes you question your life choices. I'd always assumed "off-...