There are a variety of safety features which are common to particular types of trucks such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On the majority of stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals too. In addition, some manufacturers are providing more features like speed controls which could reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more info, there are many available articles about Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Support and Service
A big part of forklift 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 in the lift truck business. Although they offer a good price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not provide the regional or local support and service infrastructure, you should be ready for significant stress when the lift truck breaks. Each and every type of lift truck goes down eventually and parts, service and general questions must be answered at some point.
Normally, you would want a local dealer or repair shop with a great supply of components for the specific make and model you are buying. Be certain to visit the repair shop or the dealership and take a look at their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they store. Make sure to ask that if they do not have the part you require, where will it come from? With any luck, the answer would be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the units currently utilized in your area. This is doubly vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks in use in their service area that you must assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Also, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that model too.