There are actually a variety of safety features which are common to certain types of trucks such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On most stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals also. Additionally, some manufacturers are offering extra features such as speed controls which can decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more information, there are numerous available articles on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
A huge part of forklift selection is to make sure that you maintain access to high levels of support and service. Every year, there seems to be a wider array of new players in the lift truck industry. Even if they provide a nice price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the regional or local support and service infrastructure, you must be ready for significant stress when the forklift goes down. Each and every type of lift truck goes down sooner or later and service, parts and general questions must be addressed at some point.
Generally, you would want a local repair shop or dealer with a great supply of components for the specific make and model you are buying. Be sure to visit the repair shop or the dealership and check their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they store. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the part you need, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the units presently used within your vicinity. This is doubly essential for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks in use in their service area that you should assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. As well, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that specific model as well.