Most forklifts and lift trucks come with many common safety features, such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will normally have dead-man petals. Additionally, some manufacturers are providing more features such as speed controls which are able to decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more information, there are numerous articles available about Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Service and Support
Making sure you would maintain access to high levels of support and service is a hugely vital part of forklift selection. There seem to be a range of new players within the lift truck industry each year. Although they offer a decent lift truck design and a nice price, if they do not offer the regional or local support and service infrastructure, you should be prepared for significant aggravation when the lift truck breaks. Each and every lift truck model goes down eventually and service, parts and general questions would probably need to be addressed at some point.
Normally, you will want a local dealer or repair shop with a great supply of parts for the particular make and model 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 know how many parts they store. Make sure to ask that if they do not have the part you require, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Moreover, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific units are presently being used in your vicinity. This is really vital for specialty trucks including turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being utilized in their service area that you should assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Moreover, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model as well.