The majority of forklifts and lift trucks are available with a lot of common safety features, such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will almost always have dead-man petals. Furthermore, some manufacturers are providing more features such as speed controls which are able to reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are numerous articles available about Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Service and Support
Making certain you would maintain access to high levels of service and support is a really essential part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a range of new players in the lift truck industry each year. Even though they offer a decent lift truck design and a good price, if they do not offer the local or regional service and support infrastructure, you must be prepared for significant aggravation when the lift truck goes down. Each lift truck model goes down eventually and parts, service and general questions will probably need to be answered at some point.
You would usually want to have a nearby dealer or repair shop with a complete supply of the parts you need for your specific unit. Be sure to visit the repair shop or the dealership and check their parts room so as to try to understand how many parts they store. Make certain to inquire that if they do not have the component you need, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Additionally, try to get some ideas as to how many of those particular models are currently being utilized within your vicinity. This is very vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being utilized in their service area that you must assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. In addition, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that specific model too.