If it makes you feel any better, there probably won't be much screaming with a truck on your chest!

And if it makes you feel any worse, a truck on your thighs with your torso outside will make you scream quite a bit.

Fair enough. My plan is to try neither, although I do usually go in head-first.

I'm always afraid my fat-ass will inadvertently kick one of the jackstand release handles while I'm shuffling along underneath.

I will never crawl under a car without putting as many jack stands, hydraulic jacks, tire stops, and wheel underneath. This habit was driven home all due to my dad. I remember he would literally yell at the top of his lungs when he saw me working on the car with just one jack.

I would not use Harbor Freight jacks or jack stands. Their quality control is no where near to the US brands.

I stick to 4x4 posts!

Always slide the removed tire under the car.

With weight on them that shouldn't be possible.

I like to pull up on them as hard as I can before climbing under. Then I rock the truck. Never had one budge.

Sorry for the radio silence. I've been away from my computer all day.
To answer some questions...
I lifted the support piece in the jack stand fully until it touched the frame and then let it down onto the next lowest latch tooth. The handle was in the down position and it appeared to be locked into place. When I put slow pressure on the jack stand, it held weight. My guess is that, because I had pushed the jack stand to the side, and up against the gas tank, the side-pressure was preventing the latch from fully engaging the tooth it was on.

I do not like trusting HF jack stands, and that's why I bought these. They are made by Power Zone. I'm keeping them to try to figure out what happened. I don't know if I'll ever use them to support the truck for anything that requires me to get underneath again, but I do want to know what happened. Pictures are coming.

Here is the jack I borrowed from a friend to lift and lower the truck.


Here is the jack stand I was using, which failed on me. Notice that all the teeth and the latching mechanism are fully intact.




Here, the truck is resting on its tires on the ground (not lifted), but this shows the orientation of the jack stand support in place and pushed up against the gas tank.

Funny thing is those probably came from the same Chinese factory that HF gets theirs from, with a different paint color and name brand stickers.

That said, I have three pairs of 6 ton and one pair of 3 ton from HF and have never had a problem in the 15+ years they've been in use.

I'd say that you are probably right.

If I can reproduce this problem consistently or figure out why this happened, I will certainly post up my experience.

It's a good time for a lawsuit.

OP, here's the big question: Can you reproduce the problem ?

From pics, the stand seems flawless. You might have to face the fact you almost killed yourself.

Good thing: Almost.