I assure you that you will be 100% safe in a Summit stand. I've used mine for 3 years now without one bit of trouble. As others have noted, the rubber coating is just to quiet the cables. This is why you can purchase replacement covering for the cables once it wears off. If I'm not mistaken, the cables on the Summit's are rated at somewhere around 10,000 lbs. No where near what we would ever put them through.