There are a range of safety features which are common to certain types of trucks including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On the majority of stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals also. Moreover, some manufacturers are providing more features such as speed controls that could reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are many articles available about Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Support and Service
A big part of forklift selection is to make certain that you maintain access to high levels of support and service. Each year, there seems to be a wider variety of new players in the lift truck industry. Although they offer a nice price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you must be prepared for major aggravation when the forklift goes down. Every lift truck model goes down eventually and parts, service and general questions will probably need to be answered at some point.
Usually, you would want a local repair shop or dealer with a great supply of parts for the specific make and model you are purchasing. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop 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 would 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 being used in their service area that you must assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Also, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that specific model as well.