There are a variety of safety features that 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 as well. Moreover, some manufacturers are providing more features such as speed controls which are able to decrease the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are many articles available on Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Support and Service
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of service and support is a very essential part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a range of new players within the lift truck industry each and every year. Even though they provide a nice price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you should be prepared for significant stress when the forklift breaks. Each and every type of lift truck goes down eventually and service, parts and general questions must be answered at some point.
Normally, you would want a local dealer or repair shop with a great supply of components for the specific make and model you are buying. Be certain 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 sure to inquire that if they do not have the part you need, where will it come from? With any luck, the answer will be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Additionally, try to get some ideas as to how many of those particular models are currently being used within your area. This is very important for specialty trucks including turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks in use in their service area that you must assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. What's more, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model too.