Most forklifts and lift trucks are available with a lot of common safety features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would normally have dead-man petals. Additionally, some manufacturers are offering extra features like for example speed controls that could decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are many available articles on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
Making sure you would maintain access to high levels of support and service is a really essential part of forklift selection. There seem to be a variety of new players within the forklift industry every year. Even though they offer a good price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not offer the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you must be ready for major aggravation when the forklift breaks. Every lift truck model goes down sooner or later and parts, service and general questions must be addressed at some point.
Usually, you would want a local dealer or repair shop with a great supply of parts for the particular model and make you are purchasing. Be certain to visit the dealership or the repair shop and take a look at their parts room so as to try to understand how many parts they store. Make certain to inquire that if they do not have the part you require, where will it come from? With a bit of luck, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
In addition, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific units are currently being used in your area. This is really 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 may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Moreover, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.