Wesco Boot’s Jobmaster is a boot with incredible range—for starters, it can be six inches tall or 16. Various versions of one of the world’s ultimate work boots wouldn’t be identifiable as cousins to the untrained eye, let alone siblings.
Case in point: I didn’t realize Seattle-based Division Road’s just-released Jobmasters were Jobmasters even though they were very obviously and unmistakably labeled “Jobmasters.” But they are, in fact, Jobmasters. Just really cool ones.
DR linked up with Wesco, one of America’s oldest bootmakers, to celebrate the latter’s 100th birthday. The base boot they worked off of is an 8-inch unlined regular toe Jobmaster—”regular toe” referencing the lacing system, as opposed to Wesco’s lace-to-toe, or half lace-to-toe Jobmaster models—done up in pull-up Horween’s English Tan Chromepak.
Think of Chromepak as a supercharged Chromexcel, in which the hides are specially selected specifically for their ability to be jammed full of oils and beeswax. Those then jolt around the boot to where they’re needed depending on the specific wearer and what the boot gets put through over the years. In these photos, the lighter boot is fresh out the box, while the darker boot is a pre-release sample that a Division Roader put six months of wear on.
Things keep getting interesting with this boot as that regular toe gets a cap on it, which you don’t really see all that much on Jobmasters (and was probably the main thing that threw me at first). The stitching on the cap and around the rest of the upper is prominent, and serves to announce that these are work boots and don’t you ever question it.
Other cool stuff: a natural leather midosle, a fully gusseted tongue to keep everything out, a GIGANTIC Wesco brand above the ankle, and, god bless their hearts, stitchdown construction.
They’re going for $645, which certainly isn’t cheap for a work boot that you may or may not ever use for actual work (no, going to the office to do notary stuff doesn’t count). But it’s hard to imagine a boot that, 10 years from now, will be begging for you to throw more at it than this one will be.
