The majority of forklifts and lift trucks are available with lots of common safety features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would normally have dead-man petals. Additionally, some manufacturers are offering extra features like speed controls that can decrease the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more info, there are many available articles on Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Service and Support
A big part of lift truck selection is to make sure that you maintain access to high levels of support and service. Each and every year, there seems to be a wider array of new players within the forklift business. Although they provide a decent lift truck design and a nice price, if they do not offer the local or regional service and support infrastructure, you must be ready for major aggravation when the lift truck breaks. Each type of lift truck goes down at some point and parts, service and general questions should be addressed at some point.
Normally, you will want a local repair shop or dealer with a huge supply of components for the particular model and make you are buying. Be certain to visit the repair shop or the dealership and take a look at their parts room so as to try to know how many parts they stock. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the part you need, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Additionally, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific units are presently being utilized within your vicinity. This is really vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you must assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Also, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model as well.