Tool Storage That Survives the Trade: Bags, Rolls & Van Setup

Quick answer

Most electricians need four layers of tool storage, not one enormous bag: a hard-base open-mouth bag for the daily core kit, a tool roll for test leads and anything delicate, a belt or pouch for second-fix days, and fixed storage — wall rails, magnetic shelves, sensible racking — in the van or workshop. On a budget, the 20-inch hard-base tool bag we sell at £17.99, the 25-pocket canvas tool roll from our shop at £8.99 and our 26-pocket belt pouch at £11.99 cover all three carry layers for under £40. If you live out of your van and open that bag fifty times a day, a Veto Pro Pac Tech OT-LC is genuinely better than anything at that money — and I'll tell you exactly where the difference is, because it isn't marketing.

The honest hierarchy: what lives where

I spent eighteen years doing maintenance in food production, which means eighteen years carrying tools across wet floors, through hygiene barriers and up ladders to mezzanine plant decks. The single biggest storage mistake I see — apprentices and thirty-year sparks alike — is the One Giant Bag: 20kg of everything, nothing findable, and the delicate stuff slowly being murdered underneath an SDS drill.

The fix is a hierarchy, and it's brutally simple:

• Open-mouth bag — the daily core. VDE drivers, pliers, cutters, strippers, level, tapes, knife, torch. The tools you touch on every single job.
• Tool roll — test leads, probes, crocodile clips, hex keys, long-series drivers. Anything delicate, or anything that's a nightmare to find loose in a bag.
• Belt or pouch — a working subset you load for a specific task. A belt is not a home for tools; it's a way of carrying six of them up a ladder.
• Fixed storage — the van and the workshop wall. The 80% of your kit you don't need today: boxed kits, consumables, the SWA glands, the hole saws.

The sorting test is this: if a tool has been in your daily bag for a fortnight and you haven't touched it, it belongs in the van. Your shoulder will send you a thank-you card when you're fifty.

If you're just starting out and building a kit from scratch, read our first-year electrician tool kit guide first — buy the tools before you buy posh storage for them.

Hard-base open-mouth bags: the workhorse layer

Why the base matters more than the pockets

Bag marketing is all about pocket counts. Ignore it. The thing that decides whether a bag survives the trade is the base.

Food factories taught me this the hard way: production floors are wet. Washdown water, brine, cleaning chemicals — and a soft-bottomed fabric bag sat in it acts like a wick. You come back to damp tools, and a week later the pliers pivot is stiff and there's surface rust on anything unplated. Building sites are no kinder: screed dust, standing water in half-finished plant rooms, mud in the van.

A hard moulded base does three jobs at once: it keeps the fabric (and your tools) up out of the wet, it lets the bag stand upright instead of slumping over and spilling, and you can wipe it clean at the end of the day. Pair that with a framed open mouth that stays open — so you can look in and grab one-handed off the top of a ladder — and you've got the two features that actually matter. Everything else is trim.

The budget answer

The 20-inch hard-base bag we sell is £17.99 and it's built around exactly those two features: rigid wipe-clean base, wide framed mouth. I'll be straight with you, because that's the point of this site: at £18 the stitching is not Veto stitching and the zips are decent rather than heirloom. What you're getting is the right structure at the price of a round of bacon rolls for the site. For an apprentice, a second bag for testing kit, or anyone who isn't hammering a bag daily, it's the correct money to spend.

The premium answers — and when they're worth it

• Veto Pro Pac Tech OT-LC — the one everyone asks about, and yes, it really is that good. It costs several times what ours does and it is genuinely several times the bag: a body built like commercial luggage, vertical pocket layout so every driver has its own visible home, and a moulded waterproof base that shrugs off the puddle you didn't see. If you're in and out of it all day, every day, it pays for itself in not-looking-for-things time alone. This is a keep-it-for-years purchase, and where the premium brand is simply better, I'll say so: it is.
• Milwaukee Packout tote — the right answer if you're already in the Packout ecosystem, because the tote locks onto the stack in the van. The system is the point: your bag, boxes and organisers become one modular unit. Buying one Packout piece in isolation makes less sense.
• Stanley FatMax open-mouth tote — the sensible middle. Stocked by practically every wholesaler in the country, waterproof moulded base, takes years of abuse. Not as refined as the Veto, meaningfully tougher than most budget bags. If our £17.99 bag feels too cheap and the Veto feels obscene, this is where you land.

Tool rolls: for kit you'd cry about breaking

Test leads are the classic victim. You spend proper money on a multifunction tester — see our best multifunction tester guide — and then let its silicone leads fight a claw hammer in the bottom of a bag. That's how GS38 probe tips get bent and lead insulation gets nicked, and a nicked test lead is a genuine safety problem, not a cosmetic one.

A roll gives every lead and every slim tool its own pocket, rolls up tight so nothing tangles, and takes up a third of the space of a hard case. The 25-pocket canvas roll from our shop is £8.99, and here's what lives in mine: spare test leads, crocodile clips, my voltage indicator and proving unit, spare probe tips and lead fuses, hex keys, and the long-series screwdrivers that vanish forever in an open bag.

One honest caveat: a canvas roll is organisation, not padding. Your MFT itself stays in the case it came with — it's a calibrated instrument, not a chisel. The roll is for the leads and slim kit around it.

Belts: for second-fix days, not for living in

Here's an opinion that annoys some people: a tool belt is a task tool, not a storage location. Wearing a fully loaded belt for eight hours a day is a subscription service for your lower back.

Where a belt earns its keep is second fix. Dressing a board, hanging faceplates, working off steps — both hands free, terminal driver never further away than your hip, no trips back down for the strippers. For those days, our 26-pocket belt pouch at £11.99 takes the whole second-fix set: VDE drivers, strippers, snips, knife, pencil, torch. At that price it's a no-brainer to have in the van for the days it makes sense.

If you do wear a belt daily — shopfitting, big commercial second-fix runs — buy leather once instead of nylon repeatedly. A Connell of Sheffield leather tool belt is handmade full-grain leather that moulds to you over time and will comfortably outlast your van; the price reflects a Sheffield workshop rather than a container ship, and for daily wearers it's worth every penny. For twice-a-month belt users, keep the £12 one and spend the difference on test gear.

Fixed storage: the van and the workshop wall

Wall rails and magnetic shelves

The cheapest productivity upgrade in this whole article is a wall-mount screwdriver rail from our shop at £8.99, fixed above the bench or inside the van racking. Every driver visible, every gap obvious. That's not tidiness for its own sake — it's stock control. You spot the missing driver at 4pm in the workshop, not at 9am on site.

The magnetic tool organiser shelf we sell (£19.99) is the one I'd have killed for in the factory years: it grabs onto any steel surface — van bulkhead, machine frame, the side of a steel enclosure — and gives you a shelf right where you're working. I used to lose glands and terminal screws into drip trays and cable trays weekly; a magnetic shelf slapped on the panel cladding next to the job ends that. In the van, park it on the bulkhead for the grab-first items.

A van setup that works without a £2,000 fitout

Professional ply-lined racking is lovely. It is also not required in order to be organised. Four principles get you 90% of the benefit:

1. Heavy kit low, daily kit nearest the doors. Your open-mouth bag lives in the same spot every night, closest to the back door.
2. One box, one job. Crimp kit in one box, hole saws in another, SWA glands and cleats in a third. Grab the box, not thirty loose bits.
3. Label everything. A shelf of labelled stacking boxes beats beautiful unlabelled drawers every time.
4. Testers come inside overnight. No rack, lock or sticker protects a van like an empty van does.

FAQ

Is a Veto bag really worth five times the price of a budget bag?

If you're a full-time spark opening it dozens of times a day: yes, over its lifespan, honestly. The time saved by the vertical pocket layout alone adds up, and it will still be working when a budget bag is on its second replacement. If you're an apprentice, part-time, or it's a second bag — no. Our £17.99 bag has the same hard base and open mouth, which is the structural part that matters.

What storage should a first-year apprentice buy?

Bag plus roll, under £30 total, and put every remaining pound into actual tools and eventually test gear. Storage doesn't wire anything. Our first-year tool kit article sets out the full buying order.

Should my multifunction tester live in a tool bag?

No. It's a calibrated instrument — keep it in its own case, padded and dry. Use a tool roll for the leads, clips and probes around it, and bring the tester in from the van overnight, both for theft and because cold, damp vans are miserable places for electronics.

Does a hard base really matter if I mostly do domestic work?

Yes — arguably more. Domestic work means wet lawns, dusty lofts, and bags parked on freshly screeded kitchen floors that a customer would rather you didn't stain. A wipe-clean moulded base protects your tools in one direction and the customer's flooring in the other.