The Economics of Everyday Things
00:02:37 · Zachary Crockett, Philip Mortolero Jr., Wayne Winton
[00:02:37] S3: A locksmith never knows what tomorrow might bring, and the same thing is true for the profession as a whole. Locks are increasingly being digitized. Keys are being replaced by numeric codes, And the real product that locksmiths sell, trust, is under siege by technologically savvy scammers. [00:03:02] S5: These guys show up. It's a whole song and dance. Oh, we're gonna have to drill out your lock. And they say, oh, we need a new lock, new this, that, and it's gonna be, you know, 1,500 to $2,000. [00:03:14] S3: For The Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The Economics of Everyday Things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, locksmiths. In any given town, it's likely that you'll find at least one locksmith nearby. The industry has a few national players like Pop A Lock, a franchise with more than 450 locations in North America. But most locksmithing operations are small businesses. [00:03:40] S4: Locksmiths are very strong willed people who don't like to be told what to do. So the corporate concept is very difficult. Again, that's Wayne Winton. It is consistent of mostly small, independent, one or two person and van in a lot of mobile shops. If you can buy a van and equipment and you get the knowledge, you can be a locksmith tomorrow.
00:03:40 · Wayne Winton, Zachary Crockett
[00:03:40] S4: Locksmiths are very strong willed people who don't like to be told what to do. So the corporate concept is very difficult. Again, that's Wayne Winton. It is consistent of mostly small, independent, one or two person and van in a lot of mobile shops. If you can buy a van and equipment and you get the knowledge, you can be a locksmith tomorrow. [00:04:08] S3: Winton operates Tri County Locksmith Service in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. It's a small operation, Winton and one employee, each working out of their own truck. Some locksmiths maintain a physical shop where they make keys and repair locks on-site. Winton, like many younger locksmiths, prefers to be mobile. His office is a Ford f three fifty with 250,000 miles on it, and he keeps his extra gear in a storage unit. [00:04:38] S4: I would say there's at least $30,000 worth of equipment in each vehicle and probably another $30,000 worth of equipment sitting in the storage unit. [00:04:53] S3: The locksmith business is multifaceted. In a given week, you might duplicate a bunch of keys, respond to residential and auto lockouts, replace deadbolts in a commercial building, and break into an old safe or bank vault at the behest of a client. To do all of that, you need a hefty stable of tools, lock picks, pin kits, door boring jigs, spanner wrenches, Dremels, drills, jigsaws, lubricant. You'll need a variety of new locks and installation hardware, and you'll also need key cutting and duplication machines that can run hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
00:04:53 · Zachary Crockett, Wayne Winton
[00:04:53] S3: The locksmith business is multifaceted. In a given week, you might duplicate a bunch of keys, respond to residential and auto lockouts, replace deadbolts in a commercial building, and break into an old safe or bank vault at the behest of a client. To do all of that, you need a hefty stable of tools, lock picks, pin kits, door boring jigs, spanner wrenches, Dremels, drills, jigsaws, lubricant. You'll need a variety of new locks and installation hardware, and you'll also need key cutting and duplication machines that can run hundreds or even thousands of dollars. [00:05:29] S4: I've got a Triton key machine that does just about all my key cutting. I've got some basic key blanks. I've probably got $8,000 worth of drill bits. Some basic electronic access stuff, fish tapes, stuff to run wire, inspection cameras, autodialer that would basically run every single combination possible on a combination lock. I've got some other little black magic boxes that do stuff that I can't really talk about, but, you [00:05:57] S3: know, just a lot of cool stuff. In the right hands, all of these tools can be a great investment. [00:06:04] S4: If I have a full eight to ten hour day, I can make anywhere from, you know, 1,200, 2,400 to $5,000 in one day. Locksmiths generally charge [00:06:17] S3: a flat fee to show up for a job. And once they're on-site, they bill an hourly rate to fix the issue. Helping people with lockouts is a big part of the job, and it requires a deep level of knowledge about many different locks.
00:06:17 · Zachary Crockett, Wayne Winton
[00:06:17] S3: a flat fee to show up for a job. And once they're on-site, they bill an hourly rate to fix the issue. Helping people with lockouts is a big part of the job, and it requires a deep level of knowledge about many different locks. [00:06:31] S4: When something new hits the market, I will literally go to the hardware store and buy it to reverse engineer it and figure out how to defeat it and be the first person to come up with that new knowledge. [00:06:43] S3: Winton says the most familiar lock is the classic pin tumbler that's found on front doors of typical houses and apartments. Inside one of these locks, there's a series of vertical pins of differing heights connected to springs. When you put the correct key into the lock, its unique ridges push those pins up in just the right alignment to allow you to turn the bolt and unlock the door. [00:07:08] S4: But in the event that you forget your key, a locksmith has another way in, a technique called lock picking. What lock picking is is taking advantage of the microscopic imperfections in that lock or tolerances in that lock to open it without the [00:07:28] S3: actual key. A skilled locksmith can exploit this by applying tension to the lock and using picks that look like little dental plaque scrapers to push the pins up individually. There's a lot of mystique around this process. On YouTube, lock picking videos have millions of views. [00:07:48] S4: How easy is it really to pick a lock? Super, super easy to pick this lock. This is a no brainer.
00:07:48 · Wayne Winton, Zachary Crockett
[00:07:48] S4: How easy is it really to pick a lock? Super, super easy to pick this lock. This is a no brainer. [00:07:54] S3: I'm a professional bad guy, and today, I'm gonna show you how I pick locks. [00:07:58] S4: How to pick a lock with a paper clip. Okay. [00:08:01] S3: But these social media experiments are often done on brand new locks. It's a lot harder to pick one out in the wild. [00:08:10] S4: It's dirty. It's gritty. People have sprayed graphite and w d 40 and made concrete inside of that lock. If I'm picking a lock and I haven't got it after ten minutes, we'll just drill it, and I will replace it on my time and dime, and I will only charge you the lockout fee. [00:08:29] S3: Not all locksmiths are so considerate. When you search for locksmith on the Internet in your city or town, it's likely that some of the top results are unlicensed operators who use local keyword advertising to get to the top of listings. [00:08:44] S4: You're in a panic. Right? You're gonna click on the first solution presented to you. You usually see a low price in 1999 or a 2999 or some ridiculously low price that nobody could work off of and survive. So that's a big giant red flag. I don't even put my pants on for less than a $100. [00:09:06] S3: These scammers will often create listings for multiple fake businesses with different names. When you dial the phone number they provide, the calls all route to a central operator who dispatches someone from a network.
00:09:06 · Zachary Crockett, Wayne Winton
[00:09:06] S3: These scammers will often create listings for multiple fake businesses with different names. When you dial the phone number they provide, the calls all route to a central operator who dispatches someone from a network. [00:09:19] S4: Somebody shows up in an unmarked car with no uniform, with a basic paper invoice that doesn't have any company information on it. They tell you that it's a high security lock. They drill it. They destroy it or damage your vehicle or damage your home lock because they're not skilled, and then they try and bully you into going to the ATM and getting cash or paying them a ludicrous sum of money, $5.06, $700 plus. So these guys, [00:09:45] S3: their game is to basically offer you a really low price and then just drill out your lock and upsell you on the hardware. [00:09:51] S4: Bait and switch. [00:09:53] S3: Winton says these scammers are taking a big toll on the locksmithing business. For every nefarious listing that gets boosted in search results, a legitimate operator is losing business. Anybody who knows how to manipulate Google can rise to the [00:10:09] S4: top of the Google ladder, and that is probably the single biggest problem in the industry today. A lot of the older guys out there that have shops, they simply don't know how to operate that stuff, and you've made it a technological game that is basically set up for us to fail. [00:10:32] S3: A lack of technical knowledge isn't the only thing to blame for these problems. Only 13 states require locksmiths to have a license.