How to Safely Jack Up a Car and Use Jack Stands

Bottom line: jacking up a car safely comes down to a fixed sequence: flat solid ground, parking brake on, wheels chocked, jack under a factory jack point, car raised, jack stands set under the frame, car lowered onto the stands, and a firm shake test before anything goes under the vehicle. The jack lifts the car. The stands hold it. Never confuse those two jobs.

That is the whole method in one paragraph. The rest of this guide covers the details that separate a routine brake job from an emergency-room visit: where the jack points actually are, how to read a jack stand's rating, the shake test most people skip, and the shortcuts that put cars on the ground with people under them every year. We sell vehicle lifts for a living; holding cars in the air safely is the whole business.

Quick Navigation

• The Short Version: The Safe Jacking Sequence
• The Gear You Need Before You Start
• Before You Lift: Surface, Brake, Chocks
• Finding the Jack Points
• Jacking the Car Up, Step by Step
• Setting Jack Stands the Right Way
• Getting the Car Back Down
• The Mistakes That Get People Hurt
• When You Outgrow Jack Stands
• Our Top Picks
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Take the Next Step

The Short Version: The Safe Jacking Sequence

Print this list, tape it inside your toolbox lid, and follow it in order every single time. The sequence matters more than any individual step.

1. Park on flat, solid concrete. Not asphalt on a hot day, not gravel, not a slope you have talked yourself into calling flat.
2. Set the parking brake and put the transmission in Park (automatic) or first gear (manual).
3. Chock the wheels staying on the ground, on both sides of at least one tire, so the car cannot roll in either direction.
4. Find the factory jack point in your owner's manual. Do not guess.
5. Raise the car with the jack, smooth and steady, watching that the saddle stays seated as the load angle changes.
6. Place jack stands under a structural point near the jack, both stands at the same height setting.
7. Lower the car slowly onto the stands until they take the full weight, leaving the jack in place, lightly loaded, as a backup.
8. Shake test: grab the car and push it hard. If anything shifts, ticks, or settles, lift it and reset the stands.
9. Do the work.
10. Reverse the order to come down: raise off the stands, pull the stands, lower slowly, pull the chocks last.

Rule of thumb: the jack is a lifting tool, not a holding tool. Hydraulic seals weep, release valves creep, and a car held only by a jack is one o-ring away from being a car on the floor. If any part of your body is going under the vehicle, the vehicle is sitting on stands. No exceptions, no "it will only take a second."

The Gear You Need Before You Start

Four items, and none of them are optional if you are getting under the car.

A floor jack that matches your car

A trolley-style floor jack is the right tool for garage work. The scissor jack in your trunk is an emergency roadside tool for changing one wheel; it is slow, tippy, and was never meant to support a car you are working under. For rated capacity, the working rule is simple: a jack rated at half your vehicle's gross weight is fine, because you only ever lift one end or one corner at a time. A 2-ton jack covers most sedans; a 3-ton unit gives you margin and covers most SUVs and half-ton trucks. Check your lowest chassis clearance too. Plenty of modern cars need a low-profile jack (3 inches or less collapsed) to reach the jack point without scraping bodywork on the way in.

Jack stands, sold in pairs, rated honestly

Here is the detail most people miss: jack stand ratings are commonly written per pair, not per stand. A "6-ton" pair is two stands sharing a 6-ton rating. Read the fine print on yours. Sizing follows the same logic as the jack: the stands only ever hold part of the car's weight, so a 3-ton pair covers nearly every passenger vehicle, and a 6-ton pair gives trucks and SUVs comfortable margin. Buy stands with a wide, welded base and either a ratchet-and-pawl or pin-through-post height lock. If a stand arrives with sloppy welds, a wobbly ratchet bar, or a base that rocks on flat concrete, return it. This is the one tool in your garage whose entire job is to not fail.

Wheel chocks

Two proper rubber or polyurethane chocks. A chunk of 2x4 is better than nothing, but real chocks have a wedge profile that bites harder as the tire loads them. Chocks go on the wheels that stay on the ground, and they are doing their most important work when the parking brake is not connected to those wheels, which is the case any time you lift the rear of a typical car.

The owner's manual

Free, already in the glovebox, and it shows the exact factory jack points and support points for your specific car. Every guide on the internet, including this one, is generic. The manual is not.

Before You Lift: Surface, Brake, Chocks

Surface first. Concrete is the answer. Asphalt looks solid but goes soft in summer heat, and a loaded jack stand foot can sink into it by degrees while you work. Gravel, dirt, and grass are hard no's; the ground compresses unevenly and the stand tips instead of sinking straight down. If you have no concrete available, thick steel plates or purpose-made stand pads under each foot spread the load, but understand you are working around the problem, not solving it.

Slope is sneakier than surface. A driveway that "looks basically flat" can carry a 3 or 4 degree grade, and a car lifted on grade has a rolling direction. If the level app on your phone says the slope is real, move the car.

Then the holdbacks: parking brake set hard, transmission in Park or in gear, chocks snug against the tread of the grounded wheels. Ninety seconds of work. A car that cannot roll cannot walk the jack saddle off its point, and saddle walk-off is how most jacking accidents start.

Finding the Jack Points

Cars are built with specific reinforced locations designed to take a point load. Everything else under there is sheet metal, plastic, or a component that costs four figures to replace.

Where the factory wants the jack

• Pinch welds: the vertical seam running along the rocker panel behind the front wheels and ahead of the rears. This is the standard corner lift point on most unibody cars. Use a jack saddle with a rubber pad or a slotted pinch-weld adapter; a bare steel saddle will fold the seam over, and on newer cars that seam damage can invite rust.
• Front crossmember or subframe: the thick structural member under the engine. This is the usual single-point lift for raising the whole front end at once. Confirm in the manual, because on some cars what looks like a crossmember is an oil pan or a plastic aero cover.
• Rear axle or rear subframe: on trucks and body-on-frame SUVs, the solid rear axle housing is a textbook lift point. On unibody cars, the rear subframe or the manual's designated rear point.
• Frame rails: on body-on-frame vehicles, the rails themselves are fair game for both jack and stands.

Where the jack never goes

Hard no's: the oil pan, the transmission pan, the fuel tank, the floor pan, plastic covers of any kind, suspension control arms unless the manual explicitly designates them, and the rear differential cover plate. The differential deserves a special note: the cast housing on many trucks is a legitimate lift point, but the stamped-steel cover bolted to its back is not, and people dent them regularly. When in doubt, the manual settles it, not the forum thread.

Red flags while lifting: creaks or pops from the body, the saddle visibly sliding, the jack handle load suddenly going light, or the car starting to lean. Any of those means stop, lower, and re-set. Lifting a car should be boring. Excitement is diagnostic.

Jacking the Car Up, Step by Step

With the prep done, the lift itself is the easy part.

1. Position the jack so the saddle centers under the jack point with the jack's wheels free to roll. A floor jack's arm swings through an arc as it rises, and the jack rolls a few inches toward the car to follow it. If the wheels cannot roll (soft ground, debris, a towel someone put down), the saddle drags across the jack point instead, and that is how saddles walk off.
2. Raise until the saddle just kisses the point, then stop and check alignment. Centered? Pad seated? Nothing about to foul the bodywork? Fix it now, not at full height.
3. Pump smooth and steady. Watch the contact patch the whole way up, not the wheel you are about to remove. The tire leaving the ground is not the milestone that matters; the saddle staying planted is.
4. Lift a little higher than you think you need. Jack stands need clearance to slide under their support point, and the car settles an inch or so when it comes down onto them. Two extra pump strokes now saves a second lift later.

If you are lifting a whole end of the car by the crossmember, remember that the wheels still on the ground become the pivot. Chocks on both sides of both grounded tires, always.

Setting Jack Stands the Right Way

This is the part of the job that determines whether everything else was safe or just lucky.

1. Place the stands under structural points: pinch weld, frame rail, subframe, or axle housing, as close to the jack as practical without crowding it. The manual's support-point diagram beats guessing.
2. Set both stands to the same height, and use the lowest height that gives you working room. Stability drops as stands extend; a car 14 inches in the air on stout stands is safer than the same car 22 inches up because the extra height felt luxurious.
3. Confirm the lock. Ratchet stands: the pawl is seated flat in its tooth, not perched on the tip. Pin stands: the pin is all the way through both holes. Look at each one. Touch it.
4. Lower the car slowly onto the stands. Crack the jack's release valve a quarter turn at most and let the car down with control until both stands carry the full weight, then watch for a second: no lean, no sinking foot, saddle posts vertical.
5. Leave the jack in place, lightly snugged against its jack point. It is not holding the car; it is a redundant backstop that costs you nothing.
6. Shake test. Grab the bumper or the rocker and shove the car, hard, in every direction you can. A properly supported car barely moves and nothing changes position. If a stand ticks, shifts, or the car rocks, lift the car and start the stand placement over. Do not negotiate with a wobble.

One more layer: if a wheel came off, slide it flat under the rocker panel near where you are working. If the worst happens, a wheel and tire is the difference between a dent in the rocker and a crush injury. Costs nothing, takes five seconds.

Getting the Car Back Down

Coming down has its own sequence, and rushing it undoes an afternoon of doing everything right.

1. Clear the floor. Tools, drain pans, the creeper, your feet. Nothing under the car but air.
2. Raise the car off the stands with the jack, just high enough for the stands to slide free.
3. Remove the stands completely and get them clear of the car.
4. Lower slowly. Quarter-turn on the release valve, hand on the handle the whole way. A free-falling floor jack drops a car fast enough to bounce it off the bump stops and bend whatever is in the way.
5. Torque the lug nuts if wheels came off: snug in a star pattern at ground contact, then final torque to spec once the tire is fully loaded. Re-check after 50 to 100 miles.
6. Pull the chocks last, once the car is entirely on its tires.

The Mistakes That Get People Hurt

Every one of these shows up in injury reports year after year. None of them survive contact with the sequence at the top of this page, which is the point of having a sequence.

Working under a car held only by a jack

The big one. A hydraulic jack is a pressure vessel with a manual release valve, and either can let go without warning. The failure is silent and takes seconds. Stands, every time, even for a "quick look."

Cinder blocks, bricks, and lumber stacks

Cinder blocks fail catastrophically under point loads; they do not sag, they burst. Stacked lumber skates and tips. Neither is a support stand. The one acceptable improvisation is the wheel under the rocker, and that is a backup, never the support.

Trusting the parking brake alone

The parking brake holds the rear wheels on most cars. Lift the rear and the brake is holding nothing at all. Chocks are not a formality; half the time they are the only thing preventing roll.

Wrong jack point, "it looked solid"

Crushed pinch welds, dented floor pans, cracked oil pans, and bent suspension arms all come from guessing. The bill for a guessed jack point starts around $200 for a folded seam and runs past $2,000 when a pan or arm is involved. The manual is free.

Mismatched or maxed-out stand heights

Two stands at different clicks put the car's weight at an angle across both of them, and a stand loaded sideways is a stand halfway to tipping. Same height, lowest workable setting, flat concrete. Boring wins.

Asphalt in July

The stand does not tip immediately. It sinks a half millimeter at a time for forty-five minutes while you are on your back under the car, and by the time the lean is visible you are exiting fast from a bad position. Concrete, or load-spreading plates, or another day.

When You Outgrow Jack Stands

Jack stands done right are safe, and nothing in this guide is an argument against them. But there is an honest ceiling on the format: every job starts with fifteen minutes of lifting ritual, you get about two feet of height at best, and you do the actual work flat on your back on a creeper. If you are under a car most weekends, the arithmetic starts to favor equipment that lifts the whole car and holds it on mechanical locks while you stand.

The step up does not have to mean a full shop install. A portable low-rise scissor lift → runs on a regular 110V wall outlet, lifts 6,000 lbs to wheel-service height in under a minute, and rolls out of the way when you need the floor back. A portable 2-post gives you full standing underbody access without committing anchor bolts to one spot forever. And a full 2-post or 4-post lift → is the endgame: the entire underbody at eye level, locked on mechanical safeties, every session. Browse the full range in our vehicle lifts collection →, or start with the scissor lift collection → if low-commitment is the priority.

We wrote a full breakdown of that decision in our jack stands vs car lift guide, including the cost math. The short version: a lift starts making sense somewhere around the point where you stop counting your garage sessions per year on one hand.

Our Top Picks

Here are the standouts from this category, picked by our Lift Specialists for real-world fit and value.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it safe to work under a car on jack stands?

Yes, when the full sequence is followed: rated stands in good condition, set at equal height under factory support points, on flat concrete, with the car lowered fully onto them, the jack left as a backup, and a hard shake test passed before anyone goes under. Every documented jack-stand accident traces back to a broken link in that chain, most often no stands at all, improvised supports, or soft ground. The method is what makes it safe, not the stands alone.

How many jack stands do I need?

Two for lifting one end of the car, which covers most jobs: brakes, oil changes, exhaust work, tire rotation with a helper wheel swap. Four stands only if the job requires all four wheels off the ground, and be aware that a car on four stands is meaningfully less stable than a car on two stands with two tires planted. If a job routinely needs all four corners up, that is the clearest sign the job actually wants a lift.

Can I change a tire with just the jack, no stands?

Roadside, with the trunk scissor jack, yes: that is what it is for, and no part of your body goes under the car during a wheel swap. In the garage, put a stand under the car anyway once it is up. It costs thirty seconds, and the moment a stuck wheel tempts you to reach behind it with a mallet, part of you is under the car.

What tonnage jack stands should I buy?

A 3-ton pair covers nearly every sedan, crossover, and small SUV, because the stands only ever carry part of the vehicle's weight. Half-ton trucks and large SUVs are comfortable on a 6-ton pair. Check whether your stands are rated per pair or per stand; per-pair ratings are common and a "6-ton" pair may mean 3 tons per stand.

Where do the jack stands go once the car is up?

Under structural support points: pinch welds, frame rails, subframes, or axle housings, per the diagram in your owner's manual. As close to the jack's lift point as practical, at matching heights, never under sheet metal, pans, or plastic. If you lifted by the pinch weld and the stand also needs the pinch weld, a pinch-weld adapter on the jack or a slightly different manual-approved point solves the conflict.

Can I jack up a car on a slope or on gravel?

No to both for any under-car work. A slope gives the car a rolling direction, and gravel lets stand feet settle unevenly until the stand tips. If you are stranded roadside on grade, that is emergency wheel-change territory: chock aggressively, keep every part of yourself out from under the car, and get to flat ground before any real work happens.

Should I leave the floor jack in place while the car is on stands?

Yes. Lower the car fully onto the stands so they carry the weight, then bring the jack saddle back up until it just touches its jack point. The stands are the support; the jack is a free second layer. The only time to skip it is when the jack physically blocks the work, in which case the wheel-under-the-rocker trick fills the same backup role.

Take the Next Step

The safe jacking method is not complicated: flat concrete, chocks, factory points, stands at equal height, shake test, jack left as backup. It costs maybe five extra minutes per job, and it removes essentially all of the ways this goes wrong. Run the sequence every time until it is boring. Boring is the goal.

And if you ran the numbers in the upgrade section and recognized yourself, that conversation is free. Our Lift Specialists talk to home mechanics every day about whether a scissor lift, a portable 2-post, or a full-size lift actually fits their garage, their slab, and their budget. Call or text (470) 208-2754 and ask.

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External authority: ALI Directory of Certified Lifts (auto-lifts.org) · OSHA 1910.178 (Workplace lift safety regs)