There are a variety of safety features that are common to certain kinds of trucks including 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 extra features such as speed controls which can reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more info, there are numerous available articles about Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Service and Support
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of service and support is a very important part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a variety of new players within the lift truck business each year. Even though they offer a good price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not provide the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you have to be prepared for significant aggravation when the forklift goes down. Each and every lift truck model goes down at some point and service, parts and general questions must be answered at some point.
You will usually want to have a nearby dealer or repair shop with a complete supply of the components you require for your particular model. Be certain to visit the dealership or the repair shop 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 need, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the models presently used in 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 might not be stocking many if any parts for them. What's more, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model too.