If you have Harbor Freight Jackstands...

I use concrete blocks.

Blocks are bad. They don't have the strength and are too frangible for supporting a car's weight. They can crumble without warning. Better to use wood if you want to use something besides jack stands.

I take it really serious. A late friend of mine had a '64 Plymouth fall on him. He spent the rest of his years of his shortened life in a wheelchair. A guy jacked up a dump truck next to my shop where I kept my race car... and it fell on him and killed him. I wasn't there at the time, but I saw that dump truck right out the back window... Sitting there on the ground.

So... I do a couple things. As Dave said, leaving the jack under while using jack stands is a great idea. If I take a wheel off, it goes under the car. When a car goes on jack stands, I grab a bumper and give it a shake. Sometimes it moves and settles on the stands.
 
I was being a smart *** but if you guys took it to mean both that's fine.
I never was a fan of the ones with the pawl on them. Pins are pita but you know if it is locked secure or not. I do have a ancient set of 6 ton stands with a spring loaded pawl that seems better.
 
Years ago, all I had were those stamped-steel stands with the pin, worked well for me in the late '80s and early '90s. The car that killed them? A Chevette! Had this POS Chevy I was car-sitting for a bit. The owner wanted me to change the oil and put new brake pads on it, before she retrieved it. No sweat, did the job, and went inside the house. Came back out a few minutes later, and the car was on the tires, with those stands squashed like a bug.
 
Damn, I have some of them holding the NYer up right now -- thanks for the heads up! Granted, I have six of them holding it up because I'm typically paranoid of just this sort of thing happening (I also didn't like the way the front end sagged when the car was supported where the subframe connects to the unibody)

Like Big John, before I totally remove the hydraulic jack, I push on the car to make sure it's well settled and not going to slip off anything. Also, if possible I throw the wheels under the car if I have them off or put ramps under the tires if I have them on.
 
I've got 6 pair of the 6 ton. Haven't had one fail, but all it takes is once. If they're crediting list price($49.99), I'll come out ahead. I only get them with a super coupon, $34.99.
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These have been holding up this truck 4-5 years.
 
I bought a set of these last summer to use at the rear of the Monaco but I got them home, looked at the mechanism and put them right back in the box. The design itself has worked on many jack stands for a long time and one might think that for that reason it'd be hard to screw up, but something looked off about how the pawl engaged the teeth. If you can SEE with your naked eye what's going to fail on a simple ratchet system intended to support TONS, walk away.
 
something looked off about how the pawl engaged the teeth

You know... I'm a big proponent of "If it looks wrong, there's a good chance it is".

Case in point... This just doesn't look safe to me. The base is narrow and it looks spindly, almost as if it's all set to twist one of the legs and fall down. I would trust it to do a brake job where the car isn't far off the ground, but getting under it? No... Just no. I'll bet that at full height, I could tug on a corner hard (like pulling to take a part off) and have that Ford Death Star van sitting on the ground.

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I have the HF 6 ton, checked the numbers but they are not on the list. Like Big_John, I always throw a tire under the rocker and also leave the jack snugged up to the differential as I work.
 
Some excerpts:

Harbor Freight sells jack stands made by a variety of manufacturers, which may be visually similar. In this case, stands produced by China’s Jiaxing Golden Roc Tools Co., Ltd are potentially defective; that’s why it’s important to check the part numbers, not just the models. While the company believes only some of the more recently produced stands are affected, it is recalling all stands with those part numbers to be sure. Taking all models and part numbers together, roughly 1.7 million stands are covered by this recall.

The design of these simple, rugged jack stands is ubiquitous; the same basic stand type is produced by a number of manufacturers (in fact, Harbor Freight’s stands come from several sources, not all of which are impacted by the recall) and sold at just about every hardware and auto parts store in America. Unless stated otherwise on the box or label, there’s a very good chance they, like Harbor Freight’s, came from a supplier in China.

In the case of the recalled Harbor Freight stands, the problem is not inherent to the design of the stands themselves. Instead, the retailer says that “aging of the tooling and inconsistent location indexing of the pawl armature hole” has led to a condition whereby “the ratchet teeth on the jack stand lifting extension inconsistently engage the pawl to sufficient depth. This potential lack of positive engagement means that the stand could fail suddenly and without warning; a small shift in the load on the stand could be enough to trigger the the failure.

Source:
Harbor Freight Jack Stands Recalled for Failure Risk; Check Yours Now
 
Blocks are bad. They don't have the strength and are too frangible for supporting a car's weight. They can crumble without warning. Better to use wood if you want to use something besides jack stands.

I take it really serious. A late friend of mine had a '64 Plymouth fall on him. He spent the rest of his years of his shortened life in a wheelchair. A guy jacked up a dump truck next to my shop where I kept my race car... and it fell on him and killed him. I wasn't there at the time, but I saw that dump truck right out the back window... Sitting there on the ground.

So... I do a couple things. As Dave said, leaving the jack under while using jack stands is a great idea. If I take a wheel off, it goes under the car. When a car goes on jack stands, I grab a bumper and give it a shake. Sometimes it moves and settles on the stands.
I fear the jack more than blocks. A guy in my area used just a jack. It leaked down and asphyxiated him.

I probably should get some good jack stands.
 
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