There are a range of safety features which are common to certain kinds of trucks like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On the majority of stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals as well. In addition, certain manufacturers are providing more features like speed controls which could decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more information, there are numerous articles available about Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Service and Support
A big part of forklift selection is to make sure that you maintain access to high levels of service and support. Every year, there seems to be a wider array of new players in the lift truck business. Even though they offer a good price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not offer the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you need to be ready for significant aggravation when the forklift breaks. Each and every model of lift truck goes down sooner or later and service, parts and general questions must be addressed at some point.
You will generally want to have a nearby repair shop or dealer with a full supply of the components you need for your particular model. 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 inquire 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.
Try to get some additional ideas on the models currently utilized within your vicinity. This is doubly vital 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. What's more, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.