THE 10 BEST AMERICAN MADE BOOTS (with @TrentonHeath)

g'day guys this is nick at stridewise.com uh normally in brooklyn new york but i've come down to nashville tennessee to film a video with the gracious very kind very talented very brilliant cobbler and also fellow youtube good guy uh trenton of trenton heath hey thanks for having me i really appreciate it well thanks for having me we're we're actually in trends uh what do you call a public place yeah so we're actually filming this in our shop uh here just outside shop that shows how much of a dainty manhattan night i am what do you call a place where you do actual work it's a workshop so uh we are here today uh make sure by the way before we keep going uh you absolutely go and check out trenton heath's uh youtube channel it's fantastic it's gigantic they are actual cobblers they put together shoes they know so many intricate fascinating things about shoes today we are talking about the best american boot brands uh you may have been tipped off from my g'day earlier that i am in fact not american but i do live in america i've been here for almost 10 years and i absolutely love america the way only an immigrant can i'm very very big fan of it and i'd love to buy american whenever possible and i'm obviously entranced and uh enthralled by the world of american work boots which which are as american as freedom and all these sorts of things yeah america's been turning out great boots for years now and i think it's one of the things that's kind of held steady so many companies have left america to take their boots elsewhere and i feel like in the u.s there's still so many boot brands that you know a few of these some of their boots are made in the u.s and others they've outsourced but they still make a lot of their boots in the u.s and then the other half they are still making their boots in america we went back and forth a bit on this because companies like uh like there are good spoilers thurgood is one of them target like this food is made in the us but some of their boots are not made in the u.s so it was a little bit tough to decide as to if this is an american workbook brand or not um it's american owned but not all the books are made in america right so we've split the list down the middle all right so first up do you want to start us off what's the what's the first brand we want to do yeah all made in america so the first brand is going to be alden shoe company now alden we have as the best high-end boot category uh it was started in 1884 by charles alden it is the longest continuously made a shoe boot company in the northeastern part of the united states and they're just they continue to put out terrific quality boots during the middle of the 20th century they actually got into more orthopedic types of boots as well and the good thing about this brand is if you have foot issues a lot of podiatrists actually refer their customers to a lot of alden shoes because they fit so well on the foot and it's definitely a brand to look at but we've worked on a lot of these over the years and the quality of them continues to be really really good the leathers especially on and they're kind of honest with uh the shell cordovan on a lot of their shoes a lot of their boots this so this is this is the the indie but it's not the indie it's like the same style but it's a it's a different leather different salt um but uh i've got i've got some shots of my old indies are up in new york um and whenever you're wearing the old movies like you feel like indian insurance is fantastic at number two we have the best value boot and that goes to parkhurst yeah podcast podcast is uh it's not very well known uh honestly it's still a very very new company it was founded in 2018 i think it was um but they are all made in northern new york state not far from buffalo and i like them a lot the things that really stand out about podcast is uh number one like the the value but they're very very good value shoes and it's good like a day night outsole it's not an imitation day night it's day night which you i can't think of any time i've seen a day night soul on a boot under 300 bucks um it's hauling chrome excel like american leather a fully leather line uh it's got a really nice flexible split reverse welt here which is like an extra water resistant type of goodyear welts the most popular boots from parkhurst probably the allen they have the most varieties of the allen boot i have a green one i made from kudu antelope up in new york those ones are about 330 ish um you've also got plenty of other allen allen boots that are under 300 bucks 290 and this one here is the delaware 298 bucks so uh yeah i think it's a really good brand uh all made in america american owned pretty new company but i think it's got some legs it'll be around for a while very good value all right number three any best american boot brands is the most durable and we actually went back and we went back and forth on this one a lot we kind of bit it a little bit because for the toughest american boots uh i really like white's boots uh nicks are also really good and trent felt the same way we we just we couldn't say which one to use and we just decided to give it to them yeah nyx and whites uh they both tie yeah for the toughest american boot friends um and uh trans actually worked closely with these with these with them right yeah i am so i've worked on a lot of nyx and white's boots so heath and i actually get a lot of questions and emails from you guys that actually use your boots so guys that are out on construction sites guys that are you know doing electrical work you're you're firemen up in the you know forest and these boots are definitely ones that i would recommend to you guys um you have a lot of heritage lining boots like these but if you're looking for true durability i don't think you can go wrong with nyx boots or white's boots they have a long heritage of building the most indestructible boots for you guys that truly use your boots for work both of their boots can also be customized so if you're needing steel toes if you're needing composite toad protection they can put metal protection i believe in the bottoms the uppers are extremely durable the soles are extremely durable their stitches are fireproof so these two brands are extremely similar and like you said it was hard for us to choose just one but it's definitely a brand that we've worked heath and i've worked on and they are just the build quality is amazing and it's definitely a boot if you're really needing a work boot it's a it's two brands that i would look at okay so for number four we have the most customizable boot and again these are boot brands that are made completely in the united states so what do we have we got uh wesco west girlfriend number four the most customizable boot brand in the us uh they were founded in 1918 they also called west coast uh boot company or shoe company um now we did just say that like brands like nyx and white are customizable and they're pretty customizable like you can pick obviously from different letters uh also there's like two different lasts all the time sometimes like two different shaft heights like six and eight inches with wesco they have this sort of a plug-in on their website where you can customize the boots so thoroughly that there are over 300 billion combinations you come up with with their boost so if you get something like the hendrick boot which is like a pretty popular option you can choose from like one of four different shaft heights it's like uh six and six seven eight ten i think it is um you've got eleven different leathers you can pick from um there's a bunch of different types of stitching as well you can get insulation and various different weights of insulation if you wanna do that there are ten different soles including three types of vibram raptor soles which are really really good for the snow and the ice and stuff like it's there are plenty of brands out there that let you customize it a bit like ian parkhurst has like two different options for uh extra arch support but wesco there are three people different levels 300 billion types of stuff so yeah it's really really slow obviously you have to wait like a fair amount of time to get them uh and they are they are expensive like north of 600 bucks but no one no one's ever regretted getting worse with you you work on them yeah so i've worked on several pairs of wesco boots that customers have sent in to us and the the overall build quality the materials we were very impressed with the last category that we have in our top five completely made in the in the united states boots is the best leathers and the award winner for that one goes to truman boot company yeah truman beer company they were founded in uh rural pennsylvania in 2014 uh and they are there's like they're very very cool boots right like but truman throughout the years a lot of i've seen a lot of new boot brands but truman is stuck with me because they have the coolest letters like i'm giving like the coolest letters um they have everything from uh over the years like moose rough out they had a black kudu they had a shrunken bison they've had all these different types of foods probably their most popular leather is the rambler leather which typically comes in like a sort of an orangey brown but they've got a bunch of other colors including a burgundy one like a burgundy boots made from this leather this one here is uh i believe it's their most popular boot this is the java wax flash it's up there among the most popular boots this one's a little bit less exciting yes but it is an exclusive vegetable tanned rough out from hawaii leather company which is in chicago like i think it's america's most beloved tannery i think and it's like it's so dark brown it's almost black so this is pretty cool it ages very nicely as well it's very similar to white's index boots um the soles the the heels everything on it very well constructed uh definitely a good quality boot and absolutely if you're one that you you know like you said that you like to be able to customize and have a big option when it comes to uppers uh yeah definitely it's a boot that i don't think you'd be disappointed with at all so that's our top five all-american boot brands american-owned made in america every boot made in the united states now we're going to go to the next section which is american boot companies that make many of their boots in america but not quite technically 100 of them but they're still very good options if you're looking for an american-made boot uh what's the first one so the category that we chose for best overall best boot in this category we're gonna have to give it to red wing red wing is just the brand that i mean so many boot aficionados know out there it's been around for over 100 years it originally was started for the coal miners and and the heart you know the conditions that they had operate in and one of the boots that has become just an absolute gold standard for them is the iron ranger most of the heritage line are still made here in the united states and then most of their more technical work boot types have been outsourced right yeah we went back and forth on this because like so there's red wing and maybe called ripping which is red wing and then there's red wing heritage and so red wing heritage uh all of them they're all made in minnesota right so that includes the iron ranger uh this is i got this as well this is like my red wing rovers in hawthorne muskina uh the letters from the united states the boots are made in the united states and i was sort of thinking i i kind of consider red wing heritage as its own company which a lot of other guys do but it isn't technically like it's the same company as the work boot company and red wing work boots they're mostly made in asia but if you go to red ring heritage uh yeah all over the character's boots are made in the u.s the iron ranger like trent said is the most popular boot um the most well known most iconic boot from red wig definitely a good thing about all of the red wings especially the ones made in america they're all uh refurbishable so not only can you send it back to their factory you can also take it to your local shoe cobbler um they're they're billed and made to last for years and years so it's definitely a very high quality boot yeah they're they're iconic as all how like everyone's first food all right number seven on the list is thorogood uh wine burner shoe company was established in the 1890s and thorogood is actually a brand within wine burner so it's not actually its own company and uh wine brenner it was like a make of like a lot of uh military boots and so on thoroughly made his first appearance in 1918 and it quickly became like the prominent like the most prominent brand of wine brenner an interesting fact about thurgood is that they're a very like pro-union company like the workers first unionized there in 1943 and in 2000 the employees took ownership of the company as part of an employee stock ownership plan so it's like a very like kind of probe a working man type aspect of the company so it gets a lot of support in the us for that reason they're currently headquartered in wisconsin 65 of thoroughgood's boots are made in the united states including the thargood mocter which is their most popular one it's the most popular one it's typically i find a lot of guys find that it is like the best balance between heritage style boot which some might call fashion style boot and actual work boot right so this actually looks really cool it's a nice mock toe it's not totally dissimilar from a mock from redwing or something but it has more uh sort of dimensions that make it work friendly and by that i mean the soul is resistant to a certain degree of electrical shock um there's a lot of really nice uh there's a lot of going on in the sole like in the insole there's a removable foam insert that has a really really good shock absorption um it's like certified by some osha uh bodies [Laughter] for it so a lot of guys like it of all the boots that i've reviewed on my channel i've got a ton of them thorough good typically is the one with like you know electricians linemen that kind of started like going yeah thoroughgood is in the field and we get a lot of thorough good boots because they're different they destroy them okay so the next boot we have on the list is chippewa so chippewa was founded in 1901 by german immigrants in chippewa falls wisconsin uh that town was a burgeoning logging town and they create a boot that would help serve the purpose needed for a lot of the loggers in that area but the thing with chippewa is like they used to say handcrafted in the u.s um and then it got a bit chicken because like some of the pots came from overseas they were assembled in the u.s because they were using handcrafted yeah and it's amazing the usa thing got a bit got a bit funny so um they they aren't quite as loudly made in the u.s but i i believe this boot is still made in the us this is the service booth yeah yeah so definitely a boot to look at um you know heath and i resold quite a few of these as well and like you said the overall build quality is really good um so it's definitely not a boot for that 300 price range that you're gonna be disappointed in at all number nine on this list and this is number four i guess in this section of uh boost that i made in the united states i'm gonna go with the there's a boot company vanguard for this one the reason i want to draw attention to this one is that uh most of thursday's boots are made uh in mexico and they're like very inexpensive that's 199 they're really really good value i'm a fan of them and a lot of people don't know that they have made in america boots as well it's the vanguard is this one they've got the lager as well as 8hs tall and uh the vanguard is i i think it's probably the best value american-made boot is 265 and like everything here is made in the u.s so while some companies um they'll like ship parts from overseas and assemble in the us um like the islets are made here the laces are made here uh even the poron like the shock absorbing poron in the soul is made in the united states so has a slightly different feeling to their other porn they have any other thursday booth they really like they really dedicate themselves to making a really american american boot and the vanguard 265 bucks probably the best value if not like one of the best value easily and number 10 the final boot company on this list the shoe company actually is allen edmonds not 100 made in the us but like mostly made in the u.s in uh where is it port washington port washington wisconsin okay yeah so you've worked with a lot of elements we work with so many allen edmonds here at our shop people from all over the world send us their allen edmonds so i can do these in my sleep so again allen edmonds as a whole are still really well made boots and shoes they have been getting some quality control comments and issues that have arisen lately because it has been bought and sold several times by other companies but as a whole allen edmonds are still really good boots and shoes uh i own the daltons i think you said you own the higgins mill yeah this is the higgins miller right here i've got this in chrome excel and i've also got the sullivan street as well and i've done like both reviews uh on this channel yeah there's so many different options you can get for their boots as well they're 360 degree welted boots uh they come they can get them with day nights you can get them with leather you can get them with oiled leather soles yeah you can also get them in uh shale quarterman leather calfskin so there's a lot of different options you can also do for their boots if you're looking for just a boot or a shoe that's synonymous with america as a whole uh you can't go wrong with allen edmonds yeah i still think even though with some of the qc issues that have come up lately it's still a shoe that you or a booth that you will keep for a long time yeah it's a real institution and us we're taking a look at and um that's it we're gonna wrap this up okay all right thank you very much for your time i appreciate it workshop yeah um make absolutely certainly subscribe to trenton and heath they're absolutely fantastic uh they got way more subscribers than me and they deserve to um and that's it the full written review by the way in the description below and make sure to subscribe here as well [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Stridewise

Views: 782,929

Keywords: best american boots, best made in usa boots, best boots made in usa, boots made in usa, made in usa boots, american boot brands, best american boot brands, boots made in america, thursday boots made in america, red wing boots made in usa, thorogood boots made in america, american made boots, best american made boots, thursday vanguard boots, red wing boots, truman boot company, alden indy, allen edmonds higgins mill, trenton and heath, stridewise, nick's boots, white's boots

Id: 1vUO3DbsFkk

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021