How Strongbox Lock & Safe Co. of Pennsylvania Was Born in Pennsylvania
We opened our doors here in 1984, and we remember the exact week we decided to bring Strongbox to Pennsylvania. A homeowner in Center City had called us, frantic. She’d been quoted $19 over the phone by another locksmith, and now the technician standing in her doorway wanted $340 to drill a lock that didn’t need drilling. She was a retired teacher on a fixed income. She’d already paid the $19 “service fee.” The technician wouldn’t leave until she paid more.
We fixed her lock that afternoon for the price we’d quoted on the phone. No drilling. No surprise. She sat at her kitchen table and cried, partly from relief, partly from anger at what she’d almost paid. That night, we made a promise: Pennsylvania deserved a locksmith who treated a lockout like a neighbor’s emergency, not a shakedown. We’d bring the Strongbox name here, and we’d run it the way the brand was built - flat price quoted on the phone, licensed tech who shows ID at the door, and a square deal every single time. That was 1984. We’re still keeping that promise.
Our Founder’s Personal Connection to the Locksmith Trade
We didn’t stumble into locksmithing. We were drawn to it, the way some people are drawn to woodworking or engine repair - by the satisfaction of making something work that absolutely has to work.
Our training started with a tradesman who trained us in a basement shop in Philadelphia that smelled of machine oil and brass shavings. The first time we successfully picked a deadbolt, it took forty minutes. Our hands shook. The lock was a Yale cylinder, common as dirt, and when the plug finally turned, the click felt like a door opening in a house we’d been trying to enter for years. That was 1982. We’re still chasing that click.
What gets us out of bed isn’t the emergency calls at 2 a.m., though we’ve taken thousands of those. It’s the moment when a homeowner realizes the person at their door isn’t trying to sell them anything. We’re there to solve a problem. To restore their control over their own home. There’s a particular silence that falls after a lock turns smoothly, after a safe opens, after a rekey is finished and the new keys work the first time. That silence is trust, earned. We’ve built our life around it.
If we weren’t doing this, we’d probably be fixing old clocks or restoring furniture. Something with moving parts that require patience and hands that know what they’re feeling. Locksmithing chose us because it demands both. The smell of graphite lubricant still reminds us of that basement shop. The weight of a Medeco key in our palm still feels like responsibility. After 42 years, every lock is still a puzzle, and every solved puzzle is still a small victory we carry with us to the next job.
Meet Our Team - The Person Behind Every Job
We are the owner and founder of Strongbox Lock & Safe Co. of Pennsylvania. We’ve spent 42 years with our hands inside locks, safes, and security hardware across this state, from the rowhouses of Tacony to the storefronts of Reading. Our training began with traditional apprenticeship methods - no shortcuts, no video courses, no weekend certifications. We learned by failing, by taking apart mechanisms we couldn’t yet reassemble, by sitting with problems until they revealed themselves.
What separates us from a corporate franchise technician is simple: we’re not measured by how many jobs we complete in a day. We’re measured by whether you call us again, and whether you tell your neighbor. We still carry a hand file in our kit, the old kind, for fitting keys that machines can’t quite get right. On weekends, you’ll find us in our workshop restoring vintage padlocks, or walking the Wissahickon trails with our dog. We believe a person who picks locks for a living ought to be the most patient person you’ve ever hired.
Our commitment to you is direct: when we work in your home, we work the way we’d work in our mother’s. That’s not a slogan. That’s the standard we hold ourselves to on every single job.
Our Promise to Pennsylvania Homeowners
Our values have a name: K.E.Y.S. We don’t hide behind them. We live them.
Krafted right. We use proper materials - Baldwin hardware when the job calls for it, Mul-T-Lock cylinders when security demands it - and we train our journeymen the old way. No shortcuts. A rekey done poorly will fail in six months, and we’ll be the ones who have to face you. We’d rather do it right the first time.
Every time. The 400th job gets the same care as the first. We learned this the hard way, early in our career, when we rushed a commercial rekey in Allentown and had to return the next morning. That never happened again.
Your home first. We wear boot covers without being asked. We explain what we’re doing before we do it. We treat your property like it’s ours, because in a sense, while we’re there, it is.
Standing behind it. The Keystone Standard: 90 days, in writing, no arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. No paperwork to file, no manager to escalate, no runaround.
Honest pricing means no surprises on the bill. We quote flat on the phone, and that’s what you pay. Quality parts mean we don’t install hardware we’d refuse in our own home. And standing behind every job means our guarantee isn’t a marketing phrase - it’s a promise we’ve kept since 2013.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed locksmith operation, meeting all Pennsylvania regulatory requirements
- Insured & bonded for your protection and ours
- 42+ years in business, serving Pennsylvania homeowners and businesses
- Strong local reputation built on repeat customers and word-of-mouth referral
Here’s why each of these matters when you’re hiring someone to work in your home. State licensing means we’ve met the background and competency standards Pennsylvania requires for the person who will have access to your locks. Insurance and bonding protect you if something goes wrong - a scratched door, a damaged frame, a rare but real possibility with any trade. Forty-two years in business means we’ve been here long enough to have a reputation we can’t afford to lose. And a strong local reputation means your neighbor, or your neighbor’s mother, has probably already vetted us for you.
Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. We verify this. We don’t guess, and we don’t hope.
Rooted in Pennsylvania
We’ve worked in the narrow alleys of Pennsport and the wide avenues of Pittsburgh. We’ve rekeyed locks for families moving into new homes in Whitman and for businesses securing their first storefronts in Palmyra. We’ve opened safes in Reading where the combination was lost decades ago, and we’ve installed Mul-T-Lock systems in Center City brownstones where security isn’t optional. Pennsylvania isn’t where we work. It’s where we live, where we’ve raised our family, where we plan to be buried. The Keystone State named our standard. We try to live up to it every day.
Written by the team at Strongbox Lock & Safe Co. of Pennsylvania, serving Pennsylvania since 2013.