Obviously the most important thing when using a floor jack, or when doing any type of work on your car for that matter, is your personal safety. A little common sense goes a long way, but there are some facets of safety that may not be so obvious. To guide you, below is a list of some basic safety principles and tip for using your floor jack.

1. Never trust your floor jack to support your car by itself. Always use jack stands.
Any mechanical component ever designed can theoretically fail, but mechanical components designed to move tend to fail at a higher rate. A floor jack falls into the latter category. It has been well documented that hydraulic floor jacks can and will fail over time due to wear on the hydraulic components. Unfortunately this mode of failure is rather innocuous because instead of a catastrophic failure, the jack will slowly let the car down. While one would think that this would be an advantage to someone in danger of being crushed, it really isn’t. Often times the slow descent during a failure goes unnoticed for the few precious moments a person has to escape. Keep in mind that a person on their back underneath a car has limited speed and agility to get out of the way as well.

But there’s good news! This problem is extremely easy to avoid by pairing your floor jack with a set of high quality jack stands. Once you raise your car with your jack, place a pair of jack stands underneath the car and rest the car on them instead of relying on the hydraulic components of your jack. Only after you have supported your car with jack stands should you ever climb under to do any work. It is also recommended that you rock the car a little bit by hand near the top to ensure that your setup is sturdy before you climb under. While it would be bad to have your car fall off a poorly placed jack stand when you give the car a little test shake, it would be much worse if it fell on you because you didn’t. You may also consider using chalks if you are only using two jack stands in order to prevent your car from rolling. As an added measure of safety, you may also place a wheel that you removed under your car for added safety (although this should only be used in addition to a sturdy jack stand, not as a replacement).

2. Always raise your car on level ground.
It is never a good idea to raise your car on any terrain other than that which is level. Resting your jack or jack stands at an angle as a result of an uneven floor creates a tipping hazard as the car can easily go over center relative to your jack and fall. The most common occurrence is when someone tries to lift their car on a slanted driveway. For much the same reason you shouldn’t use a forklift on a hill, you shouldn’t use your jack on any kind of slope.

3. Raise and lower your car slowly.
Raising and lower your car slowly allows you to identify any problems before they happen, thus hopefully allowing your to prevent them. In addition, lowering your car too quickly can lead to several scenarios where damage to your car can occur. When operating your jack either up or down, it’s best to use slow and controlled movements.

4. Use appropriate jacking points on your car.
This cannot be stressed enough. Your car has very specific points where the frame has been reinforced to support the load of the car when raising it with a jack. These locations are always lined out in your owner’s manual for your car as well as often times well marked on the car itself. Do not lift a car under any circumstances unless you are confident that you are jacking the car up from an appropriate location.
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