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the OE jack is quite adequate to jack up the truck for a tire change when the truck is on solid stable surfaces.
the advantage to a small floor jack is a wider footprint which may be beneficial on less than ideal surfaces although one conveniently sized for "standard carry equipment" might not be much more than 1 1/2 ton rated. One you'd carry would still be fairly lightweight/flimsy compared to a commercial shop duty floor jack.
I carry one of those smaller floor jack kits in my Class B RV. In a compact storage case, it has the small floor jack and 2 jack stands. It has worked well those few times I needed to change out a tire when out traveling. The RV is on a 1-ton Dodge chassis, weighing over 8,000 lbs on the road. So it's to the task of safely lifting one wheel for a tire change on an F-250. I got the kit at HFreight, but there are many other sources for this ... such as the automotive "box" stores. I carried my around for years before that first time I needed it, but when I needed it ... I really needed it on a loose road shoulder area where I'd pulled off far enough to be safely away from the traffic.
Having the floor jack was much more confidence inspiring than the original emergency jack and I appreciated having the extra safety margin of a jack stand with the RV off the ground.
OTOH ... depending upon where you live and drive with your truck, an emergency auto club membership may be a good option. If you are in an area with good mobile communication service and access to responders, having a "pro service truck" come out to change your tire may be a viable option. It wouldn't matter what equipment I put on Mrs Sun's vehicles, she's not going to change a flat tire on a 3/4t pick up truck. Just getting the lug nuts loose (and torqued back on), getting the spare tire out of the carrier, loading the removed tire back into the spare tire carrier ... would be a daunting, if not out of the question, set of tasks. She's been out on the road with our 3/4 ton diesel pick-up trucks and livestock trailers and her mobile phone brought a service truck to her location within a 1/2 hour. We're both happier knowing that the job was properly done and she was on her way fairly soon after the inconvenience of having picked up a nail in one of the tires.
........OTOH ... depending upon where you live and drive with your truck, an emergency auto club membership may be a good option. If you are in an area with good mobile communication service and access to responders, having a "pro service truck" come out to change your tire may be a viable option. It wouldn't matter what equipment I put on Mrs Sun's vehicles, she's not going to change a flat tire. She's been out on the road with our 3/4 ton diesel pick-up trucks and livestock trailers and her mobile phone brought a service truck to her location within a 1/2 hour. We're both happier knowing that the job was properly done and she was on her way fairly soon.
As it is, I have two auto club deals and I had to use one the other week to get the Forester a flat bed to get it back to the mechanic. The radiator had split and I was stranded.
I had called the warranty service of the mechanic for one, but after the initial phone call, didn't hear from them (they were calling my home phone by mistake). So I called my insurance company for roadside help and they got out to me in about 90 minutes. I also have AAA.
I would feel like a fool being one of those "who can't change a tire" but the F-250 is just so BIG! I have long since gotten use to driving it, of being those "head and shoulders" over sedans, but the prospect of it being on a jack "like that" does not thrill me. Then again, I don't know about moving those huge tires either.
I know, better hurt pride than physical injury, especially when you are operating alone. Phone service wise, the smart phone does pretty good out along the interstate and probably the state highways; it doesn't do that well in the rolling back hill country. The fade outs when in use at home has often forced me to use my landline.
Finally, there is a CB radio, as well as a TomTom, waiting to be installed in the truck, but that hasn't happened yet. These days, however, I don't know about the effectiveness of a CB, along the interstate, for anything except traffic conditions and sending out the most desperate distress calls....to say nothing of who might respond.
You can pick up a decent 3 ton floor jack for about $100 on sale at Harbor Freight or Tractor supply hardware. Yes they are made in china, so is every other jack you can find. In fact they are mostly made in the same factory by the same people with the same inside parts.
I got mine for free. My wife and son were the 100th customers at a new Tractor Supply Hardware and got $100 to spend in the store, so they bought me a new jack. That was close to ten years ago. We use it constantly. Unfortunately we often leave it outside in all kinds of weather, but it still works great. It is probably ten years old. They last forever. (My last one lasted 25-30 years)
You can pick up a decent 3 ton floor jack for about $100 on sale at Harbor Freight or Tractor supply hardware. Yes they are made in china, so is every other jack you can find. In fact they are mostly made in the same factory by the same people with the same inside parts.
I got mine for free. My wife and son were the 100th customers at a new Tractor Supply Hardware and got $100 to spend in the store, so they bought me a new jack. That was close to ten years ago. We use it constantly. Unfortunately we often leave it outside in all kinds of weather, but it still works great. It is probably ten years old. They last forever. (My last one lasted 25-30 years)
The only downside is they are heavy.
The ones I see advertised at Harbor Freight are aluminum; thoughts on those.
The ones I see advertised at Harbor Freight are aluminum; thoughts on those.
you're looking at the "full size" shop jacks there.
That's a pretty big item to be carrying around full time when all you're needing is the small one for a roadside emergency use.
RE: your concern about being physically able to change a tire out on the road is well taken. You might want to try doing so at home with the tools you've got before planning on being able to do so on the side of the road in an emergency situation. Yes, those wheel assemblies aren't lightweight on your truck, and just getting the spare out of the tire rack and putting the other wheel into the rack can be a challenge for many people.
The bottle jack is sufficient for the F250. I don’t care for scissor jacks (had one collapse on me) but if your concerned about the size of the cap on the bottle jack use a piece of 2x6 wood between it and the frame.
A floor jack is designed for use on a flat shop floor. Using one on anything less than ideal surfaces is a 50-50 proposition at best.
Hilift jacks are pretty popular among the off roaring crowd.
More than the jack, you may want to just put a conveniently sized piece of thicker plywood in the bed, to use as a base for either the factory jack or a floor jack.
If you look at for example Northern Tool, they have some higher-quality aluminum floor jacks, those might appeal to you. If you commonly carry big weights on this truck, you may want to consider a jack that can lift it with max load onboard. Of course, for say my 10,000 lb rated F-350, I'm not lifting the entire truck with the jack, a 2.5 ton jack can lift 5000 lb and that should be plenty. There is no reason to try to lift say both back wheels off the ground by jacking under the differential gears, lift one wheel at a time, to change a flat, hopefully you only have one flat at a time.
You may want to consider getting a better lug wrench, I personally like the Ken-Tool cross type lug wrenches. There are 12V impact wrenches out there, I have not tried them.
If you have access to an air wrench and a torque wrench - you may want to loosen the lugs (either jack the wheel up or just do one at a time, following the correct cross torque pattern), maybe put some anti-seize on the threads, (there is some debate on using anti-seize versus dry threads, I am firmly in the anti-seize camp) then re-torque to factory spec. Probably the lugs on this truck are currently torqued to "whatever the rattle gun could do". I need to do this with my old F-350. I got the jack, the air tools, and a torque wrench...
This is also somewhat controversial, but I like to carry a "truck sized" aerosol can "flat fixer" in my truck. While I realize it makes a mess that has to be cleaned up to patch the tire properly, it can get you out of a situation, particularly off road, where you would rather not try to jack the truck up.
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