The best jack stands and wheel chocks

ASME PASE, and why a named standard matters here

ASME PASE-2019 is the North American safety standard covering portable automotive service equipment — the design, testing, operation and inspection of jacks, stands and related gear.

The part worth knowing: under the standard, manufacturers may be required to apply a load at 200 percent of rated capacity during testing. A 3-ton stand is therefore proved against a substantially larger load than its rating, and the rating you buy on already carries margin.

That is why a named standard is the specification on this page rather than a nice-to-have. Across this site the recurring finding is that most car accessories cite no third-party standard at all. This category does, and buying outside it is a choice.

The capacity number, and how it is stated

Read the listing carefully, because rated capacity is quoted two ways and the difference is a factor of two.

Some manufacturers state capacity per pair, some per stand. A "3 ton" stand may mean 3 tons across two stands or 3 tons each. Torin publishes 3 ton (6,000 lb) for the pair on the listing we cite.

The practical margin: you are never supporting the whole vehicle on one pair anyway. With two stands under one end, they carry roughly that end's share of the weight rather than the whole car. Combined with the standard's test margin there is real headroom — but do the arithmetic rather than assuming it.

Base footprint decides tipping, not capacity

A stand does not usually fail by crushing. It fails by tipping, and what resists tipping is the footprint on the ground.

Torin publishes 7.7 x 6.9 inches with a pyramid base. That matters because the load on a jack stand is rarely perfectly vertical — a car shifts slightly when you lean on it, pull on a wrench, or when a wheel comes off and the weight distribution changes.

It also decides what surface you can use. A wide base spreads load, and on asphalt in summer a narrow base sinks. Concrete is the right surface. On asphalt, a steel plate or a paving slab under each stand spreads the load — and never on grass, gravel or dirt at all.

Pin versus ratchet, and why the double lock

The two designs are a genuine trade rather than one being right.

• Ratchet gives fine height increments — you can adjust in small steps to match an uneven floor or an awkward jacking point. The pawl is a single engagement point
• Pin puts a solid steel pin through the column. Coarser height steps, and nothing to skip a tooth

Torin's double lock is both: a ratchet bar for adjustment plus a separate removable pin through the column as the mechanical backstop. Set the height on the ratchet, then insert the pin. That is the arrangement to look for, and it means the pawl is not the only thing between the load and the ground.

Both designs are safe when in good condition. What is not safe is a bent column, a worn pawl, or a stand with impact damage — inspect before use, and retire anything that has already had a load drop onto it.

Wheel chocks, the cheap half nobody buys

Stands stop a car dropping. They do nothing about it rolling, and a car on stands with two wheels off is resting a great deal on one parking brake.

Chock the wheels that stay on the ground, on both sides of the tire, before lifting anything. If you are lifting the front, chock the rears; if the rear, chock the fronts. The parking brake usually acts on the rear wheels only, so lifting the rear removes it entirely.

On a slope, do not do this at all. Level concrete or nothing — the same requirement as changing a wheel at the roadside, covered in how to change a tire.

The sequence

1. Level concrete. Parking brake on, transmission in park or first gear
2. Chock the wheels staying on the ground, both sides of each tire
3. Find the manufacturer's jacking points in the owner's manual — a jack under a sill panel or a suspension arm bends metal and can slip
4. Lift only as far as you need. Higher is less stable and buys nothing
5. Place stands at the manufacturer's support points, set the height, then insert the safety pin
6. Lower the jack until the stands take the weight — and leave the jack in place, lightly loaded, as a redundant support
7. Push the car firmly at the wing before going near it. If anything shifts, it is not safe
8. Lay a removed wheel flat under the sill as a final fallback

When ramps are the better tool

For an oil change or anything not requiring the wheels off, drive-on ramps are simpler and arguably safer: the car sits on its own wheels on a solid wedge, with no jacking and no support point to get wrong.

Ramps cannot be used if you need a wheel off, and they need enough front overhang and approach angle to drive onto — low cars foul them. But if the job allows ramps, they remove the entire class of error this page is about.

And for the roadside version, where none of this equipment exists and the surface is not concrete, the honest answer is often to call for assistance — what to do if your car breaks down.