Locksmiths

For most of us, getting locked out of our house or our car is a pretty miserable experience. But for Wayne Winton, a lock without a key is a thing of beauty.

WINTON: When you pick your first lock that’s — that’s one huge dopamine rush. The second is when you open your first car, then when you open your first safe, and when you open your first bank vault. When you have this chunk of metal specifically engineered by hundreds of years of security technology and some of the greatest minds in the world to keep people out, and I can open that — it’s undescribable. I would put it on par as your first kiss with your soulmate. That’s about the level of joy I get.

Winton is one of around 15,000 locksmiths in America that make up a multi-billion-dollar industry. In his line of work, every day looks a little different.

WINTON: Oh, I love it, I love it. I want to be able to go unlock a Jaguar that nobody else can open, and then go crack an antique safe, and then go re-key a home for a domestic violence victim. I’ve just had so many interesting, different adventures.

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.

MORTILLARO JR: 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 going to be, you know, $1,500 to $2,000.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The Economics of Everyday Things. I’m Zachary Crockett. Today: Locksmiths.

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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.

WINTON: 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.

WINTON: It is consisted of mostly small, independent, one- or two-person and van and a lot of mobile shops. If you can buy a van and equipment, and you get the knowledge, you can be a locksmith tomorrow.

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-350 with 250,000 miles on it, and he keeps his extra gear in a storage unit.

WINTON: 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.

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 a 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.

WINTON: 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, auto-dialer 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 know, just a lot of cool stuff.

In the right hands, all of these tools can be a great investment.

WINTON: If I have a full 8 to 10 hour day I can make anywhere from, you know, $1,200, $2,400 to $5,000 in one day.

Locksmiths generally charge a flat fee to show up to 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.

WINTON: 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.

Winton says the most familiar lock is the classic pin tumbler that’s found on the front doors of typical houses and apartments. Inside one of these locks, there is a series of vertical pins of different 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. But in the event that you forget your key, a locksmith has another way in — a technique called lock picking.

WINTON: What lock picking is is taking advantage of the microscopic imperfections in that lock — or tolerances in that lock — to open it without the 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.

LOCK PICKING VIDEO 1: How easy is it really to pick a lock? —

LOCK PICKING VIDEO 2: Super super easy to pick this lock. This is a no brainer —

LOCK PICKING VIDEO 3: I’m a professional bad guy, and today I’m going to show you how to pick locks —

LOCK PICKING VIDEO 4: How to pick a lock with a paper clip, okay.

But these social media experiments are often done on brand new locks. It’s a lot harder to pick one out in the wild.

WINTON: It’s dirty, it’s gritty. People have sprayed graphite and WD40 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 lock-out fee.

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.

WINTON: You’re in a panic, right? You’re going to click on the first solution presented to you. You usually see a low price, a $19.99 or a $29.99 — 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 $100.

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.

WINTON: 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 A.T.M. and getting cash, or paying them a ludicrous sum of money — five, six, seven hundred dollars plus.

CROCKETT: So these guys — their game is to basically offer you a really low price and then just drill out your lock and upsell you on the hardware?

WINTON: Bait and switch.

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.

WINTON: Anybody who knows how to manipulate Google can rise to the 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.

A lack of technical knowledge isn’t the only thing to blame for these problems. Only 13 states require locksmiths to have a license.

WINTON: When I unlock people’s vehicles one of my favorite one liner jokes is, “You have to have a license to drive your car. I do not have to have one to break into it.”

The industry has created its own mechanisms of trust. The Associated Locksmiths of America certifies businesses they deem to be reputable.

But sometimes, the best option to find a trustworthy locksmith is to walk into a shop on the street and talk to one in person.

MORTILLARO SR: The outside is covered in keys, the door is covered in keys, I have a chair that I made out of keys, which is in here right now. And on the inside, there are hundreds of thousands of keys. This is the key temple. This is key Mecca. Okay?

That’s coming up.

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Along 7th Avenue South, in New York City’s Greenwich Village, you’ll find the impossibly tiny storefront of Greenwich Locksmiths. It’s owned by a father-son duo both named Phil.

MORTILLARO SR: My name is Philip Mortillaro Senior, and I’m the owner of Greenwich Locksmiths, along here with my son — who, when I kick the bucket, will get it.

MORTILLARO JR: I’m Philip Mortillaro Junior, and been a locksmith my whole life, studying and working under my father.

Phil Sr. got into the locksmithing trade back in the 1960s. He dropped out of school after the 8th grade, worked as an apprentice, and eventually bought a tiny building in Manhattan for $20,000, where he set up his own business. Today, it’s a neighborhood institution.

MORTILLARO SR: We do a lot of repairs on antique locks. There’s two locks that are sitting here that are from Grace church, 1846, and I’m rebuilding them. Put the key in the lock…. That sounds good.

Greenwich Locksmiths specializes in over-the-counter work. They cut and duplicate thousands of keys every week, most of them for $5 a piece. Inside the shop, there are around $50,000 worth of machines for stamping, cutting, and duplicating all kinds of keys. But the key-making side of the locksmithing business has been under threat in the past decade. A venture-capital backed company called KeyMe has rolled out a network of more than 6,000 digital kiosks all over the country. You can upload a photo of your house or car key and the machine can replicate it without the hand of a human locksmith.

MORTILLARO SR: The automatic machines are getting better. And inevitably they’re going to get better and better and better, and they’re going to take everybody’s job.

It’s not just keys — locks are changing too. Many traditional locks are being replaced by electronic locks, controlled by keypads or even fingerprints. Phil Jr. works with these keys frequently. And he says the fancy components don’t necessarily make a lock safer.

MORTILLARO JR: There’s this illusion that that system is more secure. You know what it’s better at? It’s good at giving you audit trail control. So you can see who goes in and out, but the entrance is not safer.

Wayne Winton, of Tri-County Locksmith Service, says electronic locks can actually introduce more potential security breaches than a key-operated lock.

WINTON: The only way that I can open my home before is with this specific key and you could pick that lock. Those are the only two ways in. Now, if I take an electronic lock, what if you gave that code out? What if you stored that code in your phone? What if you send an email with that code? All of those are opportunities for somebody to get access. It’s convenience versus security. And convenience always wins.

Despite their flaws, Winton feels optimistic about his trade’s ability to capitalize on electronic locks. All those houses, apartments, and office buildings that are going keyless present a tantalizing business opportunity.

WINTON: This is not only the golden age — I would say this is the platinum age of the locksmith, to be able to upgrade existing systems in homes to electronics. We’re right in the transition. Almost every new building that’s going up right now has low-voltage electronic access wires being put into it. Schools are upgrading to electronic locks so they can do a massive lock down in the event of an emergency. So, I see nothing but opportunity. Somebody in this industry now could quite literally be more well-off financially than an attorney or a doctor, in the next ten years.

Installing new systems, making keys, and changing and picking locks may be the bread and butter of a locksmith’s business. But the most prized jobs tend to be cracking safes and bank vaults. Winton has done safe work for high-security jewelers and banks all over the Southwest and Midwest.

WINTON: Usually my policy is, “Here’s my price, I need 50 percent upfront. I guarantee the work. If I don’t complete the job and I can’t open it, you don’t pay!” And they haven’t made a container on this planet that I haven’t been able to open yet.

Winton often charges several thousand dollars for a single safecracking job.

But it’s not easy work. A bank vault is one of the most secure devices on the planet.

WINTON: There’s literally three or four Swiss-type built watches in there for what’s called a time delay system or a time lock that all have to function correctly at the same time. And there’s two very highly precision made mechanical locks as well. So there is a tremendous amount of moving parts that all have to harmonize and synchronize in a very, very orderly, specific fashion in order for that vault to open. And if one of those things is off, the door remains locked and you are stuck on the other side of between six, eight, 12 inches, 24 inches of steel, concrete, glass barrier materials, just some of the craziest things the human mind can put together to keep people out.

Some safecrackers use a technique called manipulation. They’ll press an amplifier or stethoscope-like device up against the metal and listen for tiny clicks inside the safe as they turn the dials. Someone with an intimate knowledge of safe mechanics can pick up on slight variations in sound and feel, and record readings to identify likely combinations. Others might try to get blueprints from the safe’s manufacturer that tell a locksmith where to strategically drill through the steel. But if the drill goes in at the wrong angle, it could shatter a glass layer, triggering extra locking mechanisms inside the safe.

WINTON: It’s an intimate understanding of how the container functions mechanically that allows you to pinpoint a certain location to where it all comes to a head.

Winton says that all of this work rarely yields a satisfying result for a client.

WINTON: 90 percent of the time — even more than 90 percent of the time — people think there’s going to be a bunch of cool stuff in a safe. And normally there’s not. My joke is that there’s going to be nothing but rubber bands and paper clips in there.

That’s not always the case. A few years ago, Winton cracked an old safe at a newspaper office in Colorado and found long-lost photos of the serial killer Ted Bundy.

WINTON: It was like a time capsule. The last time this thing was opened was literally with the photo negatives of Ted Bundy as they were re-arresting him.

Jobs like this are glamorous. But Winton says the true glory comes from the everyday services — helping a couple get back into their car in a gas station parking lot, or changing the locks on a house for a victim of domestic violence.

WINTON: This is not a job. This is a privilege. I get to save the day. I get to be a hero. What I sell is peace of mind. And you can’t really put a price on that.

CROCKETT: Have you ever locked yourself out?

WINTON: Yes. I left my key inside the truck, but I did get myself back into it. I wouldn’t dare let another locksmith have the clout to have let me back into my vehicle. I would have broken a window first.

For The Economics of Everyday Things, I’m Zachary Crockett.

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This episode was produced by me and Sarah Lilley, and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz-Rabson.

CROCKETT: You guys could probably make a killing as burglars if you wanted to.

MORTILLARO SR: I make a killing the other way. It’s okay.