One can find a variety of safety features that are common to certain kinds of trucks including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On most stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals too. In addition, some manufacturers are offering more features such as speed controls that could reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are numerous available articles on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Service and Support
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of service and support is a hugely essential part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a range of new players within the lift truck business every year. Even though they provide a good price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you should be prepared for major aggravation when the lift truck goes down. Each type of lift truck goes down eventually and service, parts and general questions should be answered at some point.
You will usually want to have a nearby dealer or repair shop with a full supply of the components you require for your specific model. Be certain to visit the repair shop or the dealership and check their parts room so as to try to understand how many parts they stock. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the part you need, where would it come from? With a bit of luck, the answer will be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Moreover, try to get some ideas as to how many of those particular models are currently being utilized in your vicinity. 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 should assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Additionally, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.