Most forklifts and lift trucks are available with a lot of common security features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will almost always have dead-man petals. Additionally, certain manufacturers are offering more features such as speed controls which could decrease the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are numerous articles available about Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
A huge part of lift truck selection is to make certain that you maintain access to high levels of support and service. Every year, there seems to be a wider array of new players in the lift truck business. Although they offer a good price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not provide the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you need to be prepared for major stress when the lift truck breaks. Each and every kind of lift truck goes down at some point and parts, service and general questions should be addressed at some point.
You will generally want to have a nearby dealer or repair shop with a full supply of the parts you need for your specific model. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and check their parts room so as to try to understand how many parts they store. Make sure to inquire that if they do not have the component you need, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Furthermore, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific units are presently being used within your area. This is really vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being utilized in their service area that you should assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Moreover, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model as well.