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A Dream Come True

Pay Tool Box a Visit and Get the Right Tools from the Start

Jill Tranmer always wanted to have her own business. She never imagined it would be a tool and bearing sales distribution business. Jill says the best part of owning the Tool Box in Great Falls, Montana, is that it has brought the whole family together.

“It’s a dream come true,” she says. “It’s what I wanted my whole life.”

Jill, her husband Matt and their three children, Parker, 7, Addison, 4, and Noah, 1, have made the store an extension of home.

“I realized that I wanted to be around my family more” Jill says. “I like the tight knit family, so I feel like it’s brought Matt and I closer and it’s fun that my parents will just come hang out. It’s not just a job, it’s a passion.”

Tool Box owner Jill Tranmer says the key ingredients for success are having product in stock, having knowledgeable staff and having the “oddball” or specialty items available. In her case, knowlegeable staff means having 20 years of combined experience with Dave Erickson, at left, and Jake Miller, at right. PHOTO: VALERIE SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY

Furthering the family ties, in April 2025, the Tool Box became the new home for Bearing Sales, which had been the name of the company both she and her father, Sam Adkins, had worked for until it closed in 2020.

The store’s name was no longer being used by the corporate owners, so Jill brought it home.

“It’s just that hometown name that everyone still remembers,” she says, noting that it will be marketed as the Tool Box being the new home of Bearing Sales. The special connection is important to the family, and she knows it is something her father is proud of.

“He’s not part of the business, but it’s fun for him to come in and see what I’m doing, because it brings back a lot of memories for him,” Jill says.

She has no intention of really changing the Tool Box at its heart, she just wants to add her own touch to it.

“No matter what path we take, or how we grow it, how we change it, we want to make sure the Tool Box remains the same at the core of how it started, and in keeping with Duane’s legacy,” she says.

Staying true to the original legacy of the Tool Box, which was founded in 1989 by Duane Roll, it continues to be one of those places where they try to have it all on the shelf if possible.

Although located in Great Falls, Montana, via shipped items, the Tool Box casts a much wider net than one might expect with its customer base consisting primarily of general construction, professional trade contractors and several more highly skilled DIYers. Tools have been shipped as far as Alaska for a customer who requested an alteration to a tool, something many distributors might not be willing to accommodate.

The store is known for its woodworking tools and accessories and Matt says the Tool Box’s selection of sandpaper, taps and dies is the best in Great Falls. Farmers and mechanics are among the frequent customers due to the stores’ extensive range of more specialty items and a wide variety of tools spanning multiple trades.

“There’s not very many places in town you can go to get a one inch impact for working on tires,” Matt notes

With a diverse mix of tools from basic wrenches and hammers to the various power tools and specialty items, the Tool Box tries to provide premium to more budget-friendly options. In addition, they try to offer a variety of Made in the USA products.

“We’re not going to have everything, but we try as hard as we possibly can to have the specialty stuff that you won’t find anywhere else,” Matt says.

KEY INGREDIENTS

The three key ingredients for success at the Tool Box are having product in stock, having knowledgeable staff and having the “oddball” or specialty items available.

“Between those three things, that’s how we will thrive,” Jill says.

With so many people buying things online and upon receipt being disappointed with the purchase, Jill says it is critical to have items in stock.

“If you want something, you can come here and put your hands on it because you know exactly what you want,” she says.

While Jill recognizes online orders as a growth opportunity, she feels that part of what makes the Tool Box special is its small size and community feel, so they currently don’t offer e-commerce options.

“I feel like, if we go that avenue, it costs a lot of money, and people either do it really well or really bad, and you need to prepare for it,” Jill says. “I don’t want to put my eggs in that basket, because there’s just so much potential here right now and I want to make this successful.”

However, she will always be open to adapting to customers’ needs.

“If people are only going to order online, then yes, we’re going to have to do that, but right now, I really want to focus on the potential growth of the store,” Jill says.

Her expectation is that the Tool Box is a positive environment for both employees and customers.

“I want them to be able to come in, get what they need, do it with the knowledge that we have their back,” Jill says. “If they have problems, to know they can bring those problems to us and we can help solve them.”

Customers know that Tool Box employee Dave Erickson, at right, can help them solve a problem due to his vast experience in the store. PHOTO: VALERIE SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY

As a woman in the industry, Jill had to overcome the obstacle of everyone assuming she didn’t know what she was doing.

“When I started off in this industry, I had no problems telling people that I didn’t know the answer but I would get it for them,” she says. “You get nowhere in life by lying.”

For Jill, her father played a critical role in building her knowledge base. From helping him stock shelves at Bearing Sales as a child, Jill picked up the difference between bearings, seals and other parts.

“There’s not very many places in town you can go to get a one inch impact for working on tires,” Matt notes.

As she got older, Sam started teaching her more about the parts and the overall business.

“I don’t know if he really understood how much it would stay with me,” she says.

It was Sam who suggested that she start opening the boxes as they came in to learn more about the products.

“I am of the mindset in this industry, it’s not a reality until it’s right in front of you,” Jill says, noting that you can’t read a book without opening it.

Taking after her father, her brain is quick with numbers. Jill says she can memorize dimensions, part numbers or phone numbers with ease, just don’t ask her to remember the name of whose phone number it is.

In addition to bearings, Sam taught her the basics of budgeting, balancing a checkbook and how to invest, ensuring she understood her credit score before graduating high school.

When her efforts in the healthcare industry were not fruitful after college, Sam reached out to Jill and asked, “Do you want to work in the warehouse and clean bathrooms?” At the time, she wasn’t sure it was what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. That was 15 years ago.

“Who knew that it would turn into this, but I’m glad he asked me,” Jill says.

When she officially started at Bearing Sales, people coming in and dropping a pile of bearing on the counter would say “I need these,” and then ask for Sam. It didn’t take long for them to start asking for that “Bearing Lady,” because most couldn’t remember her name.

“Once you get past that obstacle of knowledge, I think it’s a very good feeling when you have earned people’s trust,” Jill said.

The name stuck and Jill has been using it ever since as a marketing tool for herself and whatever business she is associated with. Local Great Falls artist Tim Lee produced a caricature of her as “Bearing Lady” and designed the Tool Box’s current logo.

“I love helping people,” Jill says, admitting that now owning the Tool Box, puts her back in a place of being less knowledgeable, for now.

Instead, she has Matt, who has several years of experience in various trades and the two other store employees, Dave Erickson and Jake Miller, who have a combined 20 years of experience at the Tool Box.

Matt touts Dave for excelling at problem solving due to his broad knowledge of nearly everything in stock.

“If somebody comes in for something and we don’t have exactly what they need, Dave is really good at piecing stuff together and finding a solution,” he says, noting that Jake is the man to question about the woodworking tools and accessories.

No matter the knowledge base, both Matt and Jill agree that they will never try and pull the wool over somebody’s eyes about their expertise.

“If we take care of the customer, they will come back,” she says.

OLD SCHOOL

Having originally opened in 1990, the Tool Box remains a bit old school. All the order tickets, no matter the size, are handwritten.

“Every night we go through the sales slips and Jill takes them out of the inventory on the computer,” Matt says, noting that the process takes nearly two hours.

Jill is hoping to have the system fully integrated with the inventory by the end of 2025. The next step would be a bar code system.

“It’s in the works, but right now we still manually count everything we have,” she says.

Fortunately, even after only two years into ownership, she has been able to develop good relationships with several vendors and suppliers.

“The biggest difficulty is always the roadblock of being told ‘You’re not big enough’ or ‘You don’t spend enough,’” she says.

Those supplier relationships can have an impact on the final prices of products on the shelf.

Prior to Jill taking ownership of the Tool Box, the general word of mouth in Great Falls was that the store nearly always had what you needed, but it would come at a steep price.

“We’ve already done some huge pricing changes since taking over,” Jill says.

While some items were priced high, she says customers must understand that they also are still trying to make money. In setting prices, Jill regularly reviews Home Depot and Amazon.

“Our money is important too, so we want to make sure that we put ourselves in our customers shoes and price check all the time,” Jill says. “I would like to say that we are very competitive now.”

Also, in early 2025, Jill took steps to further address the issue of not being big enough by joining Sphere 1 as an avenue to help them build vendor and supplier relationships and work together with other small businesses to have a bigger stake in the game.

“That’s very big for a small business like us,” she says. “Developing those relationships with suppliers is huge for growth. There’s a lot more vendors we want to develop relationships with because now we will be able to buy from them.”

Expansion of vendor products is already planned for 2025 and 2026. Among the new items expected to land on the shelf will be the variety of options offered by DeWalt.

Jill anticipates similar benefits from the membership with STAFDA.

“Once we slow down and we can really focus, STAFDA will be a huge tool with all its different webinars and other learning tools,” she says. “The relationships, the networking, I think will be very crucial but sometimes it’s just learning about the industry.”

For example, many small businesses have had the steep learning curve of understanding tariffs in 2025.

“That’s a huge thing in the small business world and getting together with other small businesses and these big suppliers and working together to navigate it is critical,” Jill says. “STAFDA and Sphere 1 will help us with all that.”

BEARING LADY

While open to using her “Bearing Lady” designation and other advertising options, Jill says the best marketing options come from having a presence in the community.

“To me, that is more important, because having a presence in the community and making sure you’re staying in the community is more important to me than making sure that we’re advertising or high on a Google search,” she says. “Word of mouth is going to get you further in a small town than whether or not you have keywords on Google.”

Donations from the Tool Box are offered to various community organizations, public schools, healthcare organizations and sponsorships of local Little League teams.

“When we got into this, we both talked about it how we want to give back to the community as much as possible,” Matt says. “Great Falls has been a great town for us and our family, and we want to make sure that we give back when we can because this community is helping raise our children.”

Beyond donations, Jill is a fierce supporter of promoting the trades and encouraging young people and women to get involved.

She has been a member of the National Association of Women in Construction and regularly volunteers or participates in various Great Falls area school related events and activities involving some kind of construction or trade component.

“It’s a very big passion of mine to promote young people to get into the trades,” Jill says, noting that she missed out on even knowing the potential benefits of getting into some of the classes that are now available.

To encourage young adults that the trades are a viable option, she has given presentations at the local high schools. In addition, Jill recently engaged with students in a program preparing them for job interviews.

“That was a lot of fun because every student that came through had a totally different career path,” Jill says. Offering each a little advice, some she was able to provide some additional assistance about whom they could potential contact for an apprenticeship opportunity.

“It was fun to have that background and be able to offer them some more direction,” Jill says. “It’s important to promote the importance and possibilities for young people and women to get into these fields, because with the right mentor, you can really succeed.”

A DREAM COME TRUE

Convincing Jill to move forward with the acquisition of the Tool Box was a challenging process, even if she had always wanted to own a business.

Matt has been Jill’s constant point of motivation, keeping her on track with the idea that not only buying the business was a good idea but that it’s working.

“He had always told me I should have my own bearing store, and I never believed in myself, never thought I could do it,” Jill says.

It was early 2023 at a trade show that they spotted the Tool Box booth with a “for sale” sign.

“We were both kind of joking around saying ‘should we buy that? That would be fun,’” Matt recalls.

Despite encouragement and support from family and friends, Jill just wasn’t feeling good about it.

Ultimately, it was Great Falls business owner Jim Carney who was able to convince her to take the leap.

“He was the one that gave me a kick in the butt and said, ‘Yes, you can do it, you will do it, and I know you can do it,’” Jill says. “And he said ‘If you run into road bumps, call me.’ He gave me that little confidence that I needed from someone that wasn’t family. Someone that could see from the overall outside picture.”

The entire process took about six months for them to take ownership of the Tool Box.

Beyond fulfilling a lifelong dream, with it specifically being the Tool Box, it was also bringing Jill full circle back to her childhood.

During those Saturdays with her father at Bearing Sales, he would give her some quarters to run and get a pop from the store down the alley. That store was the original location of the Tool Box.

“I remember the store and I remember seeing Duane Roll,” she says. “I didn’t even put two-and-two together until well after we bought the business.”

Her memories came flooding back when they found an old pop machine to install at the store, at Jill’s insistence. Jill hopes to maintain that small town aspect of the store and perhaps instill similar memories for another child.

Staying true to its own legacy, the Tool Box is a small distributor in Great Falls, Montana, that has as much on the shelf as possible. The staff consists of Matt Tranmer, Jake Miller, Dave Erickson and owner/CEO Jill Tranmer. PHOTO: VALERIE SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY

A LEGACY

Much like her dream of ownership, Jill already has an ending vision in mind, confident that the Tool Box will maintain its solid reputation.

First, her hope is that one of her children will one day be interested in carrying the legacy on at the store.

Parker has already expressed interest in coming to the store this summer to learn about all the tools and bearings. As for Addison, according to Dave and Jake, she already sees herself as the boss, occasionally giving them “orders” when she’s at the store.

For now, the task of leadership remains firmly in Jill’s shoes. As with many tasks, she is applying the concept of “go big, or go home” to the Tool Box as she dares to take the next step forward.

Beyond turning the Tool Box into a family business, she has dreams of her own future recognition.

Within Great Falls, there is a business owner who has been admired for all that he has done for the community. Jill, only half-jokingly, says she wants to be like him, in a good way, hoping to one day be remembered in a similar fashion.

“I want people to remember that, yes, the Tool Box is a successful business, but more importantly that we are good people, and we give back to the community,” she says. “I want to make sure that when we can, that we do what we can to give back.”

This article is dedicated in memory of Jill’s father, Sam Adkins, 6/27/58-5/9/2025. A proud father, husband and grandpa, he was Jill’s guiding light into the distribution industry. May this article showcase what a great man Sam was.

 

This article originally appeared in the June/July 2025 issue of Contractor Supply magazine. Copyright, 2025 Direct Business Media.