Multitools on Alone: Leatherman's Quiet Dominance

Of the 101 contestants with a recorded gear list, 58 carried a multitool, more than half the tracked field. Most of those entries just say "multitool" with no brand attached, 42 of the 58. But where a specific brand does get named, one company owns the category almost completely: Leatherman accounts for 16 of the 17 named-brand mentions across every season and spinoff tracked. The lone exception is Zachary Fowler's Victorinox SwissTool Spirit X, which won him season 3.

The unnamed majority

That 42-of-58 split between generic and named entries is itself worth noting. Compare it to the knife, where a contestant's blade is usually the item write-ups linger on, brand and model included, and the multitool looks like the supporting tool that outlets don't always bother to specify. It's carried on more than half the tracked gear lists, yet for most of those contestants the record simply says "multitool," full stop. The 17 records that do name a brand are the exception, not the rule, which makes Leatherman's 16-of-17 share inside that smaller, named subset the more useful number to actually reason from.

Why the multitool matters beyond the tool itself

The knife meta breakdown already covers the show's real split on blades: five of the twelve completed US seasons produced a winner who carried a dedicated knife, and seven produced a winner who relied entirely on a multitool's built-in blade instead. Multitools carry more weight in a ten-item pack than their small size suggests, since for most winners a single tool is standing in for what would otherwise be two or three separate slots (knife, pliers, screwdriver, saw blade). Thirteen of the 16 winners with documented gear carried some kind of multitool; the three who didn't, Alan Kay, David McIntyre, and William Larkham Jr., are the same three winners the knife post identifies as knife-only, no multitool at all.

Which Leatherman model, and who won with it

Leatherman model	Contestants naming it	Of those, winners
Surge	4	3
Wave	4	2 (reported)
Rebar	2	1
Model unspecified	2	2
Free P4	1	1
Charge Plus (G10 scales)	1	1
Supertool 300	1	0
Charge TTi (reported)	1	0

The Surge shows up on the most winning lists: Woniya Thibeault carried a modified one to win the Frozen spinoff, and Jim Baird and Ted Baird carried one apiece to win season 4 as a father-son team. Juan Pablo Quiñonez won season 9 with a Charge Plus fitted with G10 scales, and Clay Hayes won season 8 with a Free P4, the only two winners carrying a model nobody else in the tracked data also picked. Two winners, Jordan Jonas and Roland Welker, are each linked to a Leatherman Wave by a single source, an attribution worth treating as reported rather than confirmed. Alan Tenta and Sam Larson both won with "a Leatherman" and no more specific model recorded, Sam Larson's case complicated further by sources that disagree on whether it was a Surge or a Super Tool.

The one brand that isn't Leatherman

Zachary Fowler's Victorinox SwissTool Spirit X, carried to a season 3 win, is the only named non-Leatherman multitool in the tracked data. It's a reminder that "quiet dominance" isn't the same as universal: one winner in the sample built a strategy around a different brand entirely, and it worked. But among 17 named-brand entries spanning 13 US seasons plus the Australian and Frozen spinoffs, Fowler's pick is the single data point breaking an otherwise clean Leatherman sweep.

The multi-tool gear page has the fuller model list, and the official rules breakdown covers what else fills out the ten-item selection alongside it.