Shop Hacks grand prize winner

The necessity that mothered Landon Tomica’s award-winning Shop Hack entry was organization on a budget.

“I needed a way to organize my sockets, which were lying in a drawer, but really didn’t want to spend the money on the organizers I had seen in stores and online,” the Trenton, Kentucky, farmer explains. “I never liked my sockets rolling around in the drawer, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money organizing them.”

Tomica helps out on his family’s farming operation in the southwest Kentucky community in addition to working as a repair technician at a Hutson Inc. dealership in nearby Hopkinsville and for a row crop farmer across the state line in Clarksville, Tennessee. His socket storage idea earned him $10,000 in tools and/or bulk oil from John Deere when he entered and won Successful Farming’s Shop Hacks Contest.

Click here to see all Shop Hacks contest participants from this year.

99¢ Budget

Tomica told us he happened to be at a tool store one day and spied socket “rails” selling for 99¢ each. “Well, that sure fit my budget,” he says. “You can get rails to fit different-size [33⁄⁄88-inch, ¼-inch, etc. mountings] sockets. Plus, they come with three holes drilled in the rails for mounting.”

Getting home with his supply of rails, Tomica searched for a salvaged plating to mount them on, finding a 11⁄⁄88-inch-thick piece of sheeting the right size to fit his tool cabinet drawer. He riveted the rails to the plate and was in business. 

“Now,” he says, “I can readily find the socket I need without rummaging around the drawer.”

That is a big deal for Tomica, who needs to work efficiently, making repairs for farmers. “You don’t have time to search for tools, as they are paying for your services by the hour,” he says.

The only thing Tomica says he would have done differently was use washers on the bottom side of the sheet with the rivets. “This perhaps would have held the rails more rigidly on the plate,” he reflects. “Now they flex sideways a bit when you push on the sockets. This does, however, offer the advantage of being able to push the rail sideways when searching through socket sizes.”

Creating tool storage innovations on a budget is a necessity for Tomica, who is a sophomore at Vincennes University and is slated to graduate with an associate degree in diesel technology next spring. After that, he says he will head to Murray State University to get his bachelor’s degree in precision agriculture, then return to Hutson as a technician with an eye on farming on his own.