There are a range of safety features that are common to particular kinds of trucks such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On the majority of stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals too. Furthermore, certain manufacturers are providing more features like for instance speed controls which could decrease the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are many available articles about Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Support and Service
A big part of lift truck selection is to make sure that you maintain access to high levels of service and support. Each and every year, there seems to be a wider array of new players in the lift truck industry. Even if they provide a good price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you should be prepared for major aggravation when the forklift goes down. Each and every lift truck model goes down at some point and service, parts and general questions will probably need to be addressed at some point.
Usually, you would want a local repair shop or dealer with a great supply of components for the specific model and make you are buying. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and check their parts room so as to try to know how many parts they stock. Make sure to ask that if they do not have the part you need, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Furthermore, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific units are presently being used within your vicinity. This is really vital for specialty trucks including turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you should assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Additionally, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model too.