I don't know when they stopped, because the new ones are not like this, but my old Liberty safe has a door that is 1/4" with an 1/8" body
They stopped as soon as they realized that they could fool people into buying their products at twice the price using half the materials. Just about all of the gun safe manufacturers are guilty of this.
The aggravating thing about this was that the sales people at Lowes were convinced they were all US made vs the Stack On brand, etc...
I don't think you're going to find many people at any big box store that know much of anything.
Liberty's spokes people even admitted that this was not broadcast evidenced by the fact that nowhere on their website do they admit these safes are made in China.
Of course they won't admit it. If you look on a manufacturer's website and it says "Made in US" then it might be. If it doesn't say, then it's an import. They admit it by omission, and sometimes down right lie.
Those safes have parts mailed to China where they make the safes and install the US locks.
I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but those locks are made in China as well.
The safes are shipped directly to Lowes from overseas so Liberty does not see them( according to Liberty).
Uh huh. Then explain how these exact same safes are shown in the Liberty catalog, on their website, and appear in showrooms of Liberty dealers.
I called and shopped around for similar sized safes and found that US safes are upwards of $900 for the 20 cubic ft and larger. There is the shipping to add on to that.
Anything less than $1,500 that is US built is going to be of questionable quality. Remember what I said above also. Some companies are claiming their safes are made in the US when they are Chinese as well.
So $597 with free shipping for a 20 Cubic ft model
Think about this for one second.
A Chinese company builds and equips a safe manufacturing facility. They have to pay for utilities and slave wages for the employees.
They then purchase raw materials. Steel, plastic, fabric, paint, gysum board, etc... All of these materials have to be converted into a safe.
After the safe is finished, they have to furnish a box and a skid for it. It's then loaded into a container and trucked to a port.
At the port, it's loaded onto a ship and sailed halfway around the world to the US.
From there (usually California), the containers are unloaded and placed onto a train or truck and tranported to a distribution facility. From there, it is trucked to individual retail locations.
At the retail locations, they have overhead such as advertising, rent, taxes, insurance, etc, so the product has to be sold at a profit.
Start subtracting all of these costs from that $597, and you will soon realize that you're actually dealing with a box that cost less than $100 to build.