Industry

The average journeyman age keeps climbing, nearly half of all apprentices drop out before finishing, and YouTube has become the de facto training platform for an entire generation of tradespeople. Here's what's actually happening to the apprenticeship model - documented with real numbers, real patterns, and zero nostalgia goggles.

The American frontier wasn't conquered by guns and railroads alone. It was two men on opposite ends of a crosscut saw, eating 10,000 calories a day, clearing a continent one tree at a time. Here's what those tools built - and what vanished when they were replaced.

Walk onto any commercial construction site in America and you'll notice something strange - crews tend to run either Milwaukee red or Makita teal. Almost never both. The reasons behind this tribal divide run deeper than brand preference, touching battery lock-in, dealer networks, and trade-specific engineering that shapes careers.

Techtronic Industries owns both Ryobi and Milwaukee - the budget king and the professional standard. How one Hong Kong conglomerate engineers two competing tool lines without destroying either one is a story of deliberate separation, technology trickle-down, and corporate architecture that most buyers never see.

The moment you buy your first cordless tool, you've made a decision about every cordless tool you'll buy for the next decade. The battery platform ecosystem model has fundamentally changed how tradespeople invest in equipment.

The power tool industry's shift to brushless motors has reached 73% adoption - but it's not just changing what tools people buy. It's changing who can fix them, how long they last, and what happens when they break on a job site with no authorized repair shop for miles.

Makita and DeWalt don't just compete - they represent two fundamentally different engineering cultures. One refines from Anjo, Japan. The other iterates from American industrial tradition. The tools tell that story.