My company use to buy thousands from Accuride (like 20k every 3 months). They say their headquarters is in California, but they don’t like to tell you they have plants in Mexico and China. They typically only sell through distributors. So what you & I can buy has likely been marked up at least twice. I can tell you we paid about $3.50 for what HD sells for $12. Generally they are good quality, but in the woodworking category, they are not designed to be great so they are functional, won’t come apart, but are typically not really smooth all the time. These slides are designed and built as cheap as they can make them for each weight rating category. We only had a few problems in the 15 years I worked with them. However, the slides we used were rated higher than what we needed. So just know, the safety factor is minimal and if you push it, you will probably have a problem.
I think the problem you will find from the cheap knockoffs is they will over rate them and they will be more likely to come apart. I’ve bought cheap ones for light weight, non-critical situations and they have been OK. However, it‘s simply a crap-shoot. If you buy cheap knockoffs all the time, it’s just a matter of time before you have an issue.
