The History of Liberty Safe

Becoming America’s Best Safe Manufacturer

Liberty Safe started out as an underdog. We had 8 employees who worked out of a storage unit, building just 6 safes a day. So how did we become America’s #1 safe manufacturer? With hard work and a focus on innovative technology and expert customer service.

Liberty’s Beginning

Liberty Safe was founded in 1988 by Jay Crosby, an engineer and entrepreneur who had previously co-founded the Fort Knox safe company. When we began, we built our safes by hand and worried more about making high-quality gun safes than having a large output.

Customers appreciated our focus on quality, and before long Liberty was able to expand. Within a year, we moved into a 25,000 square-foot production facility in Provo, Utah. In 1995, Crosby sold Liberty Safe to an investor and the brand experienced huge growth, doubling its sales and profitability in less than 4 years.

Over the next few years, Liberty moved its main headquarters to Springville, Utah, while keeping its Provo facility running. We eventually added another facility in Provo, along with a 45,000-square foot distribution center in Spanish Fork, Utah. Throughout the years, we’ve invested in cutting-edge technology that has helped us produce consistently high-quality safes in larger numbers. We are currently owned by an investment company called Monomoy Capital Partners LP. Monomoy Capital Partners is a private equity firm with over $2.7 billion in committed capital. We make equity and debt investments in middle-market businesses that can benefit from operational and financial improvement in the manufacturing, distribution, and consumer sectors.

In 2001, we consolidated all of our operations to a 200,000 square foot facility in Payson, Utah. We have since expanded and now operate out of a 300,000 square foot facility, where we can produce up to 700 safes a day at peak capacity.

A Commitment to American Workers

Liberty Safe currently employees nearly 400 Americans at our Payson, Utah facility. Plus, we support hundreds of independent Liberty Safe dealers throughout the U.S.A. Around 95% of the products we sell are American made, and we’re proud to be America’s top-producing safe manufacturer.

What Sets Liberty Safe Apart

Our focus on innovation, technology, and American-made durability has helped us differentiate our company from the competition. These are just a few of the innovations that have helped us make the best gun safes in the U.S.:

• Industry-Leading Fire Protection: One of the main things that has helped us earn the title of America’s best safe manufacturer is our fire testing. Our certified fire testing leads the industry. It’s based on studies originally conducted by Omega-Point Laboratories, and it’s designed to mimic what would happen in an actual house fire. No other manufacturer subjects their safes to the number of actual fire tests we do, and no other company has had more safes survive actual house fires than Liberty Safe.
• Military-Style Locking Bars: Our engineers developed the next generation in locking technology with our exclusive, ultra-strong locking bars. Most safes use round bolts to keep the door locked tight against the safe body. The problem? These are attached with a rivet, and that rivet point can sometimes be popped with a pry bar. This lets thieves bend the round bolt and get the door off your safe.

Liberty’s locking bars were designed to overcome this weak point. They’re one solid piece of 4”-wide steel, and they’ve been proven to be virtually impossible to pry past. In fact, in a pull test designed to see how long Liberty’s locking bars could withstand direct force attempting to pull the locked door open, they were 120% stronger than a similarly priced competitor’s safe.

• American-Made Steel: We also use better materials to make sure ours are the highest-quality safes. We start with American-made, pickled and oiled steel. This is a specialized way of treating the metal. It involves chemically washing the steel to remove any impurities — that’s the “pickling” part. Then oiling the steel to prevent rust from forming. This ensures maximum strength while preventing rust.
• Roll-Form Safe Bodies: Our safes are built using highly specialized roll-form technology. This is an automated process that allows a single piece of steel to be bent into shape, forming the top, bottom, and sides of a safe. That make them stronger because they’re made of one solid piece of steel, with fewer welds. Welds are a potential weak point, so in most cases, the fewer of them you have, the stronger your safe is. To our knowledge, no other manufacturer uses this type of technology. This, and the precise, robotic tech we use for the welds we do need, creates our trademark, ultra-strong, 2-piece body construction.
• Specialized Door-Bending Technology: Like safe bodies, safe doors are typically stronger when they’re manufactured from fewer pieces of steel. We have specialized technology that allows us to form a complete safe door from one piece of steel in only 90 seconds.
• The Best Customer Service in the Industry: Our expert team of customer service specialists works right out of our manufacturing plant in Payson, Utah. Several have actually worked on our production floor building our safes from the ground up. Their product knowledge is unmatched, and they can help you with problems like forgetting your combination, answering warranty questions, giving you step-by-step instructions for replacing your e-lock’s battery, and more.

Go ahead and check all the online reviews you can find and talk to any friend who owns a Liberty. Unparalleled customer service is such a part of our culture that we’re sure you won’t find any safe manufacturer who offers better support.

Our History at a Glance

• 1988: The first Liberty Safes are built
• 1989: We move to a 25,000 square-foot facility in Provo, Utah
• 1997: HiSecurity™ composite door is introduced, which consists of fireboard insulation between layers of steel and hardened plate steel
• 1997: We begin putting a unique beveled edge on the front of our top-tier Presidential series
• 1998: We earn a patent for the locking-bolt mechanism on our plate-steel doors
• 1998: We introduce our 4-in-1 Flex™ shelving system, which allows you to configure your interior in 4 different ways and customize it to your specific storage needs
• 1999: We earn a patent on our 4-in-1 Flex™ system
• 2001: We move to a 200,000 square-foot facility in Payson, Utah
• 2001: We begin producing our specialized 2-piece, roll-form safe bodies, proven to be significantly stronger than typical 3-piece safe bodies
• 2008: We launch our door storage panel, which makes it easy to store handguns, documents, and other items on the inside of your safe door
• 2008: We develop our new marble finishes, which gives customers even more beautiful color options, so their safe will match their home decor
• 2009: We introduce our revolutionary DX-90 and GX-480 Monster Mech systems to make our safes even less susceptible to theft
• 2013: We expand our Payson facility to 300,000 square feet
• 2018: Our engineers develop our military-style locking bars. These solid steel, ultra-strong bars are the next-generation in locking technology. They replace the round pins traditionally used to keep a safe’s door tight against the body, and make our safes virtually impossible to pry open
• 2021: Liberty Safe was purchased by Monomoy Capital Partners LP.

Environmentally Friendly Manufacturing Practices

In addition to constantly innovating our safe designs, we also focus on improving our manufacturing processes. Our million-dollar paint process is one of the most environmentally safe paint systems in the U.S., removing 95% of all VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds). Even California would be impressed! We also recycle the overspray from our powder-coating booth so there’s very little waste, making it more environmentally friendly.

We use state-of-the-art water jets to cut our fire-board to exact specifications that produce extremely tight tolerances. This means Liberty is able to put fire-board into areas other manufacturers leave unprotected. The one downside to this is that it can make for soggy, heavy fire-board waste. To counteract this, we extract the water back out of our fire-board scrap before disposing of it, which helps reduce waste.

Manufacturing processes like this have reduced our waste footprint by 90%.

Our Retail Partners

Liberty Safe also produces a variety of private-labeled safes for large corporations such as Bass Pro/Cabela’s, John Deere, and CASE Construction. We also sell our Liberty-branded safes through a number of well-established retail chains such as Scheel’s, Tractor Supply Company, Sportsman’s Warehouse, Ace Hardware, and many regional farm stores.

In addition to our retail partners, we have 350 independent Liberty Safe dealers throughout the United States. These privately owned stores are a great place to see a huge selection of Liberties (most of our dealers carry our full Liberty lineup). Most also deliver and install our safes, so they can take excellent care of you and make your safe-buying process simple and worry-free! To find a Liberty Safe dealer near you, use our Find a Dealer tool.​

At Liberty Safe, we’re serious about the promises we make to our customers. Our commitment to technology, innovation, American-made durability, and legitimate fire testing are just a few of the things that have made us the #1 safe manufacturer in the United States. Thanks for choosing Liberty!