[Rebelgecko]

For me it's more of a pareto thing. 90% of the time, the Harbor Freight tool is gonna do the job. Even if I end up needing to buy a more expensive tool 10% of the time, I'm still coming out ahead. YMMV depending on how often you need to use various tools or if you're buying jack stands (or anything else where failure could lead to death/injury)

[sliken]

However I got a harbor freight pneumatic nail gun, oiled it before use, and every night before putting it away. It almost lasted the building of an 80 foot fence, almost.

Funny enough I did buy some jack stands that looked good, and we recalled for catastrophic failures: https://images.harborfreight.com/hftweb/recalls/Jack-Stand-R...

If you need a single or low use unpowered tool I consider harbor freight. Generally anything powered, which is more expensive, I want to keep longer, and has a higher chance of damaging itself, what you are working on, or you I buy something name brand.

The harbor freight rolling tool chests are quite nice, and features on various tool/garage forums as a great deal.

[mikestew]

From the recall notice:

...a potential, while under load and with a shift in weight, for the pawl to disengage from the extension lifting post, allowing the stand to drop suddenly.

Having just run to the garage to make sure that my Harbor Freight jack stands aren't in that recall, it occurred to me, "how do you fuck up jack stands?" If there ever was a patent, it had to have run out before my grandfather was born; just go copy a high-quality model, sorted. Even if one doesn't just plain copy the design, I don't think you'd have to be much of an engineer to come up with something that won't collapse on itself under load. I mean, there's three pieces to the whole damned thing, and the design seems to allow a lot of slop on tolerances. Yet the folks at Pittsburgh Jack Stands(tm) seemed to think, "but we could save another nickel if we made the tolerances just a bit larger."

Anyway, that's why I always slide some sort of backup under the vehicle no matter the quality of the jack stand.